Pale Wings
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I'm not satisfied when it doesn't gather itself up again. Someday, perhaps, that cup will come together.- Hannibal. Mischa Potter barely survived the war, broken and beaten, and the worst is yet to come. A tale of sycophants and sociopaths, and what it means to be a family. Tom/Fem!Harry. Hannigram. Uncle!Hannibal. Murder Family.
1. Chapter 1

**PALE WINGS: PROLOGUE  
****Butterflies**

* * *

Mischa Potter's P.O.V

Mischa Potter had made a poor job of hiding the damage. She knew that. It was like black mould under a white-washed wall, pure and crisp, but the shadows tarried in the high sun, and right there, if you squinted, you could see the draw of decay. Lilac licked at the thin skin of her eyes, the corner of her bottom lip was cracked, blistering pink from the fang she kept worrying the soft flesh with, her curly blond hair, usually a happy sunshine yellow, was a tangled mess of coils and corkscrews, and there was a certain droop to her that could often only be found in a sunflower with a bobbled head too heavy for its spindly stem. Scrunched up in the small seat on the train, knees drawn to chest and temple resting on window, Mischa looked very much like a lost child.

Still, dressed in a new baby blue thick jumper, knitted as a parting present from Molly, jeans with no holes, shiny fawn coloured brock shoes, she hoped she made at least a partly pleasant visage. Breezy. Bright. Like the morning sky. Approachable, but nothing special. Someone you would look right over if you passed in the street, as people often did with a clear morning sky when they had other things on their mind. Even her scar was mostly covered with the newly cut fringe, though, the hair spiralled and curled up from her brow and left a good inch of the lightning bolt visible. She could never fully escape what and who she was, no matter how hard she tried, but here, dressed as she was, surrounded by muggles, a whole sea away from England and all those dank little memories, she felt as if she could run just far enough to escape the pounding reflections.

"Next stop, Penn Station. Thank you for using Amtrak rail services."

Mischa poked one last time at her half nibbled egg and cress sandwich, wincing as the mayo dribbled onto the tray of the train seat. White on white. She remembered that. A blinding white so bright and hot it turned pupil to pin-pricks. The keening whistle of a train hanging in the air. Something underneath the bench. _Someone. _Crimson and squirming. Leave it to die. Leave it to whither and shrivel like a crumpled leaf blew free from bent tree branch. _Don't pity the dead, __Mischa__. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love. _She could feel it, the weight in her arms, blistery and twisting, thickness smearing, crimson splashed on white petals and white arms and she had stomped, kicked, bucked, she had-

No. She mustn't think of that. Anything but that. Secrets for secret places, lies told in an echo, rippling through the dark, distorting until it made no more sense, just noise. No one knew. No one but her. And no one would. Shakily, she twisted open the bottle of orange fanta and downed half. The spice of firewhiskey set her nerves to ease. Underage drinking was last on her long list of sins.

Dumping her half picked apart lunch in the little bin in the side of her train seat, Mischa jostled to a stand, slinging ratty rucksack over shoulder as she haggled with the overhead compartment, yanking battered suitcase free. When the case thunked onto the ground, the woman behind her, an old woman hewn from paper skin and glass bones, swamped in garish paisley, who had been napping through the soft sway and chug of the train, gave her an idle glare for being disturbed. Mischa winked at her. The glare turned into a foul scowl and Mischa could only chuckle.

Squeezing and shimmying through the crowded train, Mischa came to the cart doors, propping herself against the hand rail by the lit buttons as the train began to slow to a puttering stop. She felt nervous. Jittery. Twitchy. She hadn't felt nervous in a long time. Not since the clearing in the Forbidden Forest, smooth stone rubbed under the pad of her thumb, Sirius's face-

She must not think of that. Mischa must not think of many things, for if she did, in the light of day, out in the open, they would come spilling out of her, secrets no longer in their secret places, echo's no longer rippling in the dark but screaming in the sunlight, there for everyone to see and hear and feel. Secrets, she thought, were a lot like dreams. Sometimes, they spilled over. Sometimes, they stained. Sometimes, they splattered everywhere like slit carotid arteries.

"Welcome to Penn Station. We hope you have enjoyed your journey with us today."

Mischa tightened her grip on her luggage and listened as the doors whooshed open. It was bright today. Clear too. A bite in the air lingering from a drawn out winter. Spring was coming. Minding the gap, Mischa stepped off the train, watching as mothers, fathers, business men and tourists in scarf's and camera's dangling around their necks, began to flitter about like a kaleidoscope butterflies.

There were the chequered skippers, all brown and amber, with their re-usable shopping bags filled with groceries from the next city over, tittering home with loaves of bread under arm. There was the brush-footed, shoes glossy and polished, pencil skirts tight and suit jackets pressed, barking orders for coffee or for Jeff down in accounting to get his arse into gear so they could close the deal, from their mobile phones, commuting on mass to work. There were the children darting between legs, giggling, cabbage whites sparking in their air as mothers yelled for them to return or wait. There was the gossamer winged common blue, decked in jewellery and perfume, fluttering in mincing steps, checking nails, meeting loved ones and lovers in waiting rooms, dark alleys and cars. And there she was, Mischa Potter, standing just passed the yellow line of the platform, the Ascalapha Odorata, the black witch moth. Not belonging to the day. Not part of the crowd. The witch lost in an ocean of muggles, like a moth engulfed by a swarm of butterflies.

And she would stay 'lost' for six months, until her seventeenth birthday. On her seventeenth birthday, Mischa would reach the age of majority in the wizarding world. She could do as she pleased. Act how she pleased. Live where she pleased. The ministry of Magic would no longer be able to order her to do anything. She would buy a little cottage out in the sticks, near the coast, where fields would bloom with wild flowers that sweetened each breath, and the air would taste like salt. She would spend days outside, counting and catching butterflies, purple ones, her favourite, mixing potions over bubbling cauldrons, and whittling her days through with cups of peppermint tea and treacle tarts freshly baked.

No one would find her in her cottage so far removed. The sound of the ocean would drive away the screams of war she still heard in the dead of the night. The taste of mint and honey would wash away the acrid taste of ash and blood that still persisted on her tongue. On her wall, the largest in the front room, would be a mirage of butterflies, caught and delicately pinned to parchment paper, framed in sleek glass, so many colours cut from velvet wings, so many that there could be no possible way she would ever see that terrible, terrible white hell again.

Best of all, she would no longer be passed around then, like a used handkerchief that people felt too bad to bin. Aged and shabby, discoloured and mangled, but still holding that drop of sentimentality that stalled one from completely discarding it. Taking in a shaky breath, Mischa squared her shoulders and began to push through the crowd, towards the exit of the train station and towards the front road where, she knew, a car should be waiting. At least this time she wasn't being handed over to Petunia and Vernon. Those days were long gone. No more cupboards. That was the one thing she had put her foot down on. Nevertheless, she couldn't decided whether this alternative was better or worse.

After the war, after everything Mischa had gave, all she did, killing T-_. _Well, Mischa had thought she had earned her freedom. Voldemort was _g__one._ The wizarding world would be focused on rebuilding from the ruins left by the war. No one would have any time to focus or pay attention to a little girl with no home and no family. Orphan's were absorbed, lost, forgotten in a blink. Mischa should know. She had been there and done that. Only, this time was different. This time she was _special_. The saviour of the wizarding world. If only they knew the truth. They, the ministry of magic, wanted to be seen as protectors, for all their mistakes, and so, had to be seen doing right by her, the child that had won a war. They couldn't be seen dumping her on the nearest doorstop, even if it was only for the next six months. And so began the quest to find Mischa a home, as if she was a feral dog being adopted from an overcrowded kennel.

Turns out Mischa was not the only one to have led a double life, of moth and butterfly, muggle and witch. Nanny Annie, an English nickname to hide her not so English name Ausra, had been walking that tight rope long before Mischa had been born. Her mother's mother, as it turned out, had been married before Mischa's grandfather. Mischa couldn't remember her grandmother much, Petunia had only visited once or twice, when Mischa was barely walking, the two women loathed each other, Mischa had heard Petunia ranting about her grandmother long and often enough, even after her death, but Mischa had only a few kind memories of the woman, all warm and golden. It was her grandmother that had named her Mischa, given her the one piece of jewellery she had, a locket with a sprawling family sigil embossed on the front, the name etched on the back, and two little black and white photo's of children inside, and it was Mischa's grandmother who had given her this 'opportunity', in a convoluted way.

Before Ausra had come to England from Lithuania, married a younger, bright eyed Martin Evans in a little village chapel on the outskirts of Surrey, she had lived a whole other life. In fact, she had married a Count, lived in a bloody castle, had two previous children, and seemed all set and ready to live the rest of her days out in peace and wealth. For whatever reason long lost to time and death, perhaps the secret hiding in nanny Annie's damp grave, she had packed up shop, fled Lithuania, over the great scope of Europe, settled in England, and like some sick joke, began all over again. She married Martin, had another two children, both girls this time, Lily and Petunia, not even two years after fleeing, changed her name to Anne, and well… Never looked back.

Her first husband, Robertus, was dead. So was her youngest child, Mischa. Merlin. Her grandmother had named her after the poor kid she had ditched back in Lithuania, and Lily, liking the name, had never questioned it. Mischa wondered if she looked like her, this ghost child of pale wings, a child from another life, or if nanny Annie had simply missed the child so much she needed a part of her back even but in name, and she, herself, had nothing of the blood in her. Mischa didn't know which idea she preferred most, but, well, the locket with the name and family sigil was only given to her, not Petunia, not Lily, not Dudley, and well, Mischa remarkably resembled her grandmother, blonde hair and too-green eyes and all… In the end, it did not matter. One child remained from her first marriage, Lily's older half brother, and with the Potter line completely dead in the water, Mischa the last to carry the name, the ministry had tried to find her some living relative.

In ironic happenchance, this half brother of her mothers had, in fact, been searching for his mother. He had found her in nanny Annie, found the truth, Martin, Petunia, Lily, Mischa herself, all of it, and had contacted the muggle services to get in touch with her. They in turn had gotten in touch with Petunia, who, no longer having Mischa under her roof, although she still collected benefits for 'looking' after the girl, panicked and contacted the ministry, alerting them to a man searching for his niece. The ministry had picked up on the digging going on to her family, saw the truth themselves and, well, would you look at that, a home already in the making with most of the paperwork already filled out. How joyous for everyone!

They did not ask for Mischa's approval when they contacted him. They never asked. Mischa only found out when his letter arrived saying he was looking forward to meeting her this spring. And so, they, the ministry, conjured up a cover story, and everything had fallen into place like dice rolling in snake eyes. It was easiest to stay as close to the truth as possible, so Shacklebolt had told her, to stop Mischa from slipping and accidentally outing the wizarding world.

_"Just stick as close to the truth as possible, Mischa. Change few facts. Hide the lies in truth and no one sees the rot."_

Lily and James Potter, former MI5 agents who had been tracking an underground terrorist cell, were killed on October 31st, when a deranged serial killer and leader of the terrorist sect, obsessed with the ideology of immortality, broke into their home. James was murdered out in the hallway. Lily was killed standing over her child's crib, trying to protect the infant. The leader, who went by the moniker of Voldemort, went to kill the child, after having a series of delusions about a baby killing him, and in the struggle with her mother, a struggle that ended with Mischa's burning scar, he was grievously injured, believed dead for many years.

_"Repeat it back to me, Mischa. It's important you remember your story."_

In a resounding fuck-up by child services, Mischa was given to Petunia and Vernon without following proper protocol, who were not the best of parents to the child. They kept their abuse hidden, and none were the wiser. By age eleven, Mischa had been granted into a gifted school, one her parents had once upon a time attended, and soon, the cards came tumbling down. Tom reappeared in her first year, having broken into her school, masqueraded as a teacher, and tried to bludgeon her to death with a stone. Second year he attacked again, abducting her friend, Ginny Weasley, and tried to poison Mischa with exotic snake venom. In third year, Mischa's actual guardian who had been appointed by her parents prior to their untimely murder, another member of the MI5 task team set to capture and quell this terrorist guerilla movement, broke out of a mental asylum and came for her, only for it to come to light that he wasn't the one to sell her parents out to Tom, and for it to be another friend and colleague, Peter Pettigrew. After Pettigrew escaped, with no proof of his innocence, Sirius was forced to go on the run, still trying to protect his god-daughter.

_"No, Mischa. Try again. You must get the story straight or your uncle, a well-respected psychiatrist and head in his field, will tear it apart. Now, begin again."_

In Mischa's fourth year, Tom lashed out once more. With his own people in place, he infiltrated her schools' games, murdered her friend, Cedric Diggory, and tried to finish her off before Mischa managed to escape. In her fifth year, having picked up on Tom's pattern of attack, Mischa was superficially inducted into the same organisation her mother and father worked for, in an act to protect her. This obviously failed. Spectacularly. They were cornered in a building and Sirius… Sirius die-… Sirius…

_"Can't I just stay here?"_

_"No. your uncle has… Stubbornly requested a meeting with you and we have no ground to deny it. You also need a home and responsible guardians to look after you until you turn of age. If we keep trying to push it back, he'll ask more questions, push harder, and we don't need more people digging into anything else."_

One of the heads of the MI5 department her parents worked for was murdered by Severus Snape, another member they believed to be on their side but was actually a turncoat. With Albus's death, it all fell down to ashes. Civilians were killed, government institutions were infiltrated and finally, it all came to a head right back where it all started. In a last ditch attempt, Tom attacked Mischa's boarding school once more. Many people died, agents and civilians alike, but not before Severus Snape, who had been playing triple spy to hand them information on Tom's lot, passed Voldemort's location to Mischa before he too kicked the bucket.

_"We've doctored and created all the files necessary, with help from our contacts in the muggle services and government. All you must do Mischa, is stick to your story. Just for the few months you'll be over there."_

Mischa, not wanting anyone else to get hurt, snuck off to face her dear ol' foe. She was fatally wounded in the little scuffle, but managed to stab Tom in the heart, ending the madness once his followers disbanded having seen their god-like leader killed by nothing but a child. Mischa was then taken to an intensive care unit for her injuries where, just a few weeks ago, she received a seemingly innocuous letter from Baltimore, from an uncle and a side of her family she had never knew existed.

Yes. Mischa Potter knew her story. She knew many stories. Just like she knew many butterflies. And just like butterflies, stories had papery powdered wings, too delicate to touch or hold, so easy to snap and crumple and, Merlin, here she was, with so many stories to keep straight. Still, she reminded herself, just six months and she would be _free_. Her own agent. And who knew? This uncle, perhaps, might be an alright fellow, a family member Mischa might actually keep in touch with. In his short letter to her, merely a simple line of; _I sincerely await your arrival this spring and wish you good health and a quick recovery, _was nice. There was no butterflies hidden in his words. He didn't pretend to want to know about her mother or father, he didn't lie and say he was sorry for their losses, for he did not know them, and neither did he fake sincerity into a rambling waterfall of excuses. It was concise, clear, and, most importantly to Mischa, bluntly to the point. She respected that most.

"Ticket, please?"

Mischa snapped back out of her memories with a flap of her lashes, eyeing up the haggard looking man behind the turnstile of the train station. Nodding, she didn't speak much these days, Mischa dipped a hand into her jean's back pocket and plucked out the piece of paper, flashing it to the man. He nodded in turn and swiped a card over his desk and the turnstile opened. When Mischa stepped out into the open front car park off the main road of the train station, the air became nippier, chilly and sharp without so many people pressing in on her from every direction. Here, in the cool air, surrounded by the rumbling cut and start of engines, Mischa found she could breath properly again.

"Mischa?"

The deep voice came from right behind her, the roll of the vowels heavy with an eastern European whorl. Turning around, Mischa was met with a man made of all sliced lines, as tall as he was broad, impeccably dressed in silks and cotton that could only be Italian imports. Even his Oxford shoes were spit to dazzling glean. His hair was in contrast to her own, dark, neatly combed back and away from his even sharper face, slightly peppered with greys around the temples and front. And while he stood with all the bearing of someone in their mid-forties, time did not seem to constrain him like it did most people, wrinkling and weakening, but maturing, like wine, adding aristocratic dignity and prideful strength to an already overflowing bearing of presence. Notes of a gentleman, nanny Annie would say. To come up behind her, he must have been waiting in the entrance lobby. He must have saw her come through, followed her out.

Nevertheless, even though he said her name in that ineffable voice, Mischa had heard it as clear as a tweeting robin on a snow covered branch in a barren wood. There was a distance there as he looked at her, like a deep canyon had torn asunder between them, but in reality, wasn't looking at _her. _The locket around her throat felt unbearably heavy then. Hot too. Scorching. Inside lay two photos. Black and white. Children. Mischa had always thought the one of the left, the little girl, had been one of her. Perhaps not after all. Her gaze flickered down to her own shoes for a split second, saw the cheap flex of faux leather, a scuff already blackened on the side of her toes, and winced. What a poor sight she must make to this man of composer and pressed slacks. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse from misuse, having not talked since saying goodbye to her mother and father-… Back there, in the forest, and to her own ears, she sounded light, airy, childish and lost. So very, very lost. So very, very young.

"Dr. Lecter?"

But it was her voice that broke him out of the hollow appraisal, and Mischa knew he was seeing pale wings of things long dead. She did too, most days. Yet, he heard her voice and he smiled. Really smiled. It wasn't a large smile, neither was it toothy and bright, but those smiles, full of sweeping lip and blunted tooth were often forced creatures, hiding the glowers and scowls and venom. This smile, yes, was little, a barely there curve, a phantom of a dimple dipping close by on his cheek, a slight crinkle to his dark eyes, rattling dark eyes, yet, it was _real_. Mischa found herself smiling back, just as small, just as barely dimpled, just as real.

"There is no need for such formality, Mischa. Just Hannibal is fine. Or, if you prefer, I would very much like to eventually be known as uncle?"

* * *

**A.N: **This was spawned from a little AU idea I had of my other story, Where Hemlock Blooms, where the little plot bunny of a question; What if it weren't Alana Hemlock was related to, but Hannibal himself? God knows where this AU will go, or how far it will go, I'm taking it a chapter at a time, but, well, here it is! What no one asked for lol. Still, I have a round-about idea about this AU, and so, thought to give you guys a clearer scope of the fic before we start.

This is going to be completely family themed. No romance, not for Mischa. Just family. Hannigram is included in this fic, quite heavily, (read real fucking heavy), so if that isn't your crumpet, I'd advise not going any further. I am delving into the whole Murder!Family Hannibal plot, but Mischa is not going to be as crazy and unstable as she is in Where Hemlock Blooms. I'm also not sure whether I am going to include Abigail Hobbs into this fic (What do you guys think, should I include her?). This fic is also going to be heavily focused on just three characters, Hannibal, Will Graham, and Mischa, and while others are introduced and we touch base with them, they're never going to be a focal point.

I also want to give a big **warning **this fic is going to be SLOW. And I really mean slow. I'm coming in from a completely different angle than I did with Where Hemlock Blooms. This is mainly a study into the characters, how I envisage them, what drives them, the psychology behind it all, the relationships between them and how they form, and less about killing and murder (Although we will have plenty of that in here, but the characters and their reactions will always be the first priority). If you hate slow fics that have heavy conversations and move slower than a snail, I really wouldn't read this fic. Some chapters are just going to be Mischa and Hannibal talking at a piano, or Will and Mischa playing with dogs, I'm being completely honest here lol, so if that ain't your thing, this is your heads up.

Of course, dark themes are included. Hannibal is a cannibal, mind games are played, bodies are cut up and put in tableaux, all the grotesque artistry of Hannibal the TV show, so please, keep that in mind if you are triggered by such things. This, like Where Hemlock Blooms, will earn its M rating, but, yet again, it's going to be a slow build up to such things.

I'm also taking large liberty with canon, both in the Potterverse and Hannibal, as you can see from this prologue. Hannibal's mother was actually called Simonetta in the books, never talked about in the show, and of course, Lily had no half brother, and the biggest bone of contention that will likely appear, this Fem!Harry is, Merlin forbid, blond! Lmao, but well, fanfiction! If you want canon, watch the show/movies or read the books.

Well, with all that said and done, I really do hope this wetted your appetite and you look forward to more! If you have a spare moment, drop a review, hit the follow and favourite button, and hopefully, if this takes off, the next chapter will be written and posted soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER ONE: THE MORGUE.**

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Mischa Potter's P.O.V

There was no singular place people went to die. They died in bathrooms and backstreet alleys, closets and coastal lines, bedrooms and bushes, shops and staircases. Death, Mischa knew intimately, struck where and when it wanted, with no remorse, no recognition, and in no discernible design. Akin to a great edacious canine, it consumed and took and gnawed and crunched. It would never get full. Death's stomach was a limitless pit with enumerable remains lost wakeless inside. Sometimes, when Mischa looked up to the night sky, if the air was clear of cloud and smoke, with the shimmer of stars rippling across its pitched face, Mischa thought she was seeing a thousand souls listlessly staring back, and then, in those terrible moments, Mischa thought she might already be in the great stomach of the beast. Another soul devoured. Nevertheless, most corpses did end up in one particular place, at one given time or another. _The morgue_.

Doctor Hannibal Lecter's house was a wild boar of a building, swollen fat with decadence but with a muscled structure of elegance that left it more predator than otiose rapacity. Simplicity clashed with abjection in every room, a battle ground between minimalism and extravagance that, really, as Hannibal gave her a swift sweeping tour, gave Mischa a niggling feeling of being so very, very out of place. Everything here had its set, it's own home, lovingly burnished and placed, rugs so intricate they were more tapestry than something to scuff your muddy boots across, leaving her with an unsettling fear of touching or damaging anything around her.

Too many rooms to count, paintings in gilded frames, genuine ones slick with oil paint and lacquer, winding hallways of barrelled walls so broad she could stand in the very eye, stretch her arms as wide as she could, and fingertip would never brush wooden panel. There were hearths in nearly every room she came across, great bricked things of pale grey granites with smoky mouths yawning into the rooms. The furniture too reeked of money and age, matured woods and leather pinned with brass tacks, cleansing lines of contour, resplendent with curvilinear scallops, crossing beams of trestles, and columnar clawfoots. Grand mirrors, the antique kind, with real silver backs, polished to a crisp radiance, that left Mischa shying away from her own haggard, out-of-place reflection. Yet, none of these rooms unsettled Mischa as much as the kitchen.

"And this is the kitchen. My favourite room in any house, I must admit."

Doctor Lecter said as he stepped aside from the entryway to the kitchen, striding into the room, allowing Mischa to peep in, her hand lingering on the door frame. Immediately, unfathomably, she felt a wave of glacial wind lap over her, through her, prickling her skin and eyes to goose pimples and foggy mist. The counter-tops were cut from chrome, glazed and angular. All mortuary tables lined with knives. The lights were cold and white, bright but low, the kind used for autopsies. Even the fridge, a shiny metal brute of a machine, reminded Mischa of the cold chambers of a morgue, and when she blinked, she saw a pale blue toe with a blank name tag corded around it. There was no distinct smell either, no spice or leftover, or tea or coffee, nothing but a slight chill in the air that, very likely, Mischa could be imagining. Everything was meticulous. Acute. Clinical. _A morgue. _

"A heart that doesn't beat."

Mischa didn't know she had spoken until she did, and even then, she wanted to reach into the air and snatch the words back, swallow them back down with greedy teeth and tongue.

"Excuse me?"

Mischa blinked at the man who, somehow, some way, was her uncle. Mischa knew what uncles were like as closely as she knew what death was like. With their fat hands, sweaty palms, ruddy cheeks, spittle in the face as they yelled and screamed, the slight hustle of their belt as the buckle was undone, the pang of pain across her back, the bruised hand prints on crooked young arms too pale and thin, the smell of mould and damp and blood. Well, she had thought she knew what uncles were, and, she knew it was such a strange thing to be scared of, this notion of 'uncles', or 'aunts', but she was, she was terrified and alone and-

But there was no Vernon Dursley in this man before her. Not even a suggestion of him. No bristled moustache or watery gaze, plump middle or squat legs, the wrath that always seemed to be skulking underneath Vernon's skin, rippling the flesh with pulsing nervure and spindly spider veins, was no where to be seen. Still, when she thought Doctor Lecter might yell or curse her for such a stupid remark, perhaps pluck up the closest object to him, regrettably a knife, and throw it at her head, leaving her to scamper off to her cupboard to hide and cower as she did when she was six, like uncle Vernon used to, there was only curiosity, no animosity, in Hannibal Lecter's voice.

It unsettled her more than it should have. She was good with anger and hatred, she knew how to appease those emotions, keep quiet and take the pain, it would be over when they grew wheezy, but curiosity? Mischa didn't quite rightly know what to do with that one. No one had ever really been curious about _her_. Curious about what she could do, what she could do _for_ them_,_ what she could do for the _greater good_, yes, but never curious about what she thought, or what she wanted, or how she felt. Curiosity, to Mischa, was something used to gage someone's abilities, another tool used to take, not to contemplate them and to give something back. A voice.

It was then she realised, as Doctor Lecter's head cocked to the side, that she had been silent for a long time. So long, in fact, she could only hear the slight inhale of air through her nostrils and the slight pounding of her heart, the hum of the cold lights. She blinked some more, heard the slight clip of her lids meeting, perhaps she shuffled on her feet, and waited. The silence drew on and, yes, Doctor Lecter was really expecting an answer from her. Normally, people only asked excuse me when they wanted you to shut up and crank your head down. They never really wanted an answer. All of a sudden, Mischa found herself scrambling for one, if nothing but to get the heavy attention to go away. It made her skin feel binding and itchy.

"I-.. I mean… Well… They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, don't they? I think I heard that somewhere. People laugh over boiling pots of half-cooked pasta as the fish burns in the oven, wives gossip over glasses of wine, children climb table-top to get to the sugary cereal. Kitchen's have a life all their own. In a way. This, well, it's..."

"Dead?"

Blink, blink, blink. Clip, clip, clip. The flutter of powdered wings, or bullets being fired. The image mollified her somewhat. To be frank, Mischa didn't know much of kitchens, or families, or what or how things went down in them. She knew aunt Petunia's kitchen, she knew the snap of a spatula on the back of her knuckles if she burnt the bacon or toast, if she spilt the tea, but, well, she had heard stories. Little adverts replaying on TV of housewives in aprons posing with frosted cakes illuminated with candles, children scuffling around the table for the box of cereal on sale in the local Tesco's with fifty percent less sugar, or glamorous models opening the fridge, showcasing steaming meals of delectable food that, with a monthly payment scheme, would make you, too, as slim and beautiful, and all delivered right at your front door!

Yes, Mischa had seen all the jolly pictures, and she had seen Molly Weasley's kitchen, all the laughter and warmth like a shaken wasp nest, abuzz with life and colour, and movement and merriment, and she thought she might know what a kitchen was _supposed _to be, but, unfortunately, she had no point of reference for herself. Belatedly, she realized she might have also confused lies with reality, such as the existence of happy endings, blissful families, or, well, many other things adults told children so they could sleep easy. After all, how happy would Molly's kitchen be with no Fred there to spike the pumpkin juice with firewhiskey? Mischa didn't know, neither would she ever know the answer to that question, not after-. No.

Doctor Lecter's tone was not dismissive, nor was it accusatory, or, Merlin forbid, insulted. It was just curious. _Curiosity killed the cat. _Mischa winced. She never liked that saying. There was nothing inherently wrong with curiosity, even if it did unsettled her. It was the answers to those curious questions that got people killed. Her too. Perhaps that is why she disliked it now. It reminded her of herself. Mischa got people killed better than most other things.

_Voldemort dead on the ground. Blood on her tongue. Not over. Fight. Have to fight. Bang. Mischa stop! Flash. Blood splattering on her face. Warmth. Mischa no! Fire. Ash in the air. Something else. Gargling. Something chewy in her mouth. Mischa, please! Lump in her throat. Swallow it down. Flares of colours like pulses. Mischa! Mischa! Mischaaaaa - _Must not think of many things. Especially that. Never that.

"I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't mean to-, I should have- I-I-I"

She was having trouble finding her words now. They slipped through her straining fingers like slugs, blubbery and slippy, squishing between her nails. She used to stutter horrendously as a child. Dudley used to call her M-M-M-Mischa, because of it, contorting his face in over exaggerated twists and spasms as he and his friends laughed and threw rocks at her. She was ten when she could finally get her name out without stuttering on the lip smacking M, and from there she had worked hard on it, wilfully and dutifully rolling over every consonant in every word, in every sentence, in every Merlin damned speech, so she would not slip, and she would not hear, in the back of her mind, those taunting laughs and the echoing M-M-M-Mischa of Dudley's gloating voice.

By eleven, her stutter came sometimes, in moments of stress or hurting, but it was hardly noticeable outside of these snaps of over exposure and vulnerability. It had been years since she had stuttered so badly. Then, back in the healing wards of St Mungos, strapped to a bed by leather cuffs, the kind used in Azkaban littered with runes to zap the wearer of their magic, the chaffed red skin still raw around her wrists and ankles even now, after she had-… _After_, it had come crashing back over her and she was M-M-M-Mischa again. Always M-M-M-Mischa.

Doctor Lecter backed away with lengthy strides, over and behind the kitchen island of a mortuary table, leaning back into a barstool, one long leg crossed over the other. With a gentle wave of his hand, he gestured to the stool opposite him. Mischa didn't move.

"It's perfectly fine, Mischa. Here, come, have a seat."

She didn't move for a long time. Instead, she tapped her tongue on the roof of her mouth, in sets of three. Tip, tap, tat. After seven rounds of this, tip, tap, tatting from back to front, to the very top of her teeth, her tongue was back under her control, and the jumping in her jaw muscle was nothing but a twitch now. Prying her fingers from the door frame, warmth flooding back into the tingling digits, she realised her knuckles had bleached to white and there, in the shadow of the curving wood, was four little crescent moon indents staring back mockingly.

She was acting, and if Mischa was honest, feeling a bit like an abused animal. The kind you saw in kennels, shaggy and soiled, crowding into a corner as you passed the bars, head down and ears flat and baleful eyes watchful and distrustful. The thing is, those dogs never got adopted. They got euthanised. It was the puppies that got adopted, the bouncy little ones who, yes, had a tough start, but there was still hope, not the old dog with its ear bitten clean off. Sometimes, a plucky do-gooder would try and re-home the dog, they would take it in for a time or two, but when it inevitably did what it only knew how to do, chewed up sofa's or pissed in the corner, or ate their cat, it was sent packing back to the kennel to start the cycle all over again. 4 Privet Drive, Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, The Weasley Burrow, yes, Mischa knew that nomadic leaping life all too well.

Still, Mischa Potter was no dog, she was just an old hand with an old soul and old eyes, and like all the other places she had gone, this one was probably ephemeral too and, for the brief six months, all she had to do was not tear up Doctor Lecter's expensive furniture, defecate in his lovely house, or, if he had any, eat his pets. That seemed an easy and simple enough check-list to follow. Most importantly, and currently pressing, she needed to stop crowding corners, pinching her ears down and acting like there was a hit coming any second now.

The rubber soles of her shoes obnoxiously squeaked as she slunk through the door, across the smooth tiles of the kitchen floor, still unable to completely come away from the sanctuary the wall offered her back, as she edged around the corners over to the seat. Mischa didn't know whether she liked Doctor Lecter's encouraging and pleasant smile when she finally managed to peel herself away from the wall and sunk into the chair opposite him, the door was right at her back now and anybody could sneak up behind her, wand raised, or knife, or whether she was angry he had noticed anything remiss at all.

"What else do you see?"

Many things. Ghost and ghouls and gangrenous memories that clung to her mind like mildew on caulk. No matter how hard she scrubbed, the mould, those boggy memories, wouldn't go away from the window of her life. And then, there were those dreadful ones. The ones she _couldn't _fully remember, tiny scraps of feeling and pain and noises that taunted her from places deep within, places she dared not look. _Answers kill. _Mischa swallowed and she could hear the dissonance reverberate loudly in the calm air around them, and she knew Doctor Lecter could hear it too. She looked up at him them, right up, but she could only bring herself to meet the soft skin under his eyes before her gaze fell to the tip of his sloping nose. Nanny Annie had that nose, she'd crinkle it when she found something distasteful. Mischa had it too and did the same. Did Doctor Lecter?

"S-See?"

Doctor Lecter got up from his seat in one fleeting movement, strolling over to the table-top lining the wall opposite the fridge. With his back turned to her, he reached up into the cupboard, rummaging around, Mischa knew, as she heard the clink of china and glass.

"When you looked around the house, what did you see?"

When Doctor Lecter turned around, Mischa saw his prize. A tray composing of a glass tea set, two little glasses perched next to the teapot like chicks in a cosy nest. He brought the set over and laid it exactly between the two on the counter before he was in movement again, over towards a metal rack underneath the cold lights of the cupboards, popping open the caddies placed inside. He pulled out one of those pricey paper bags with an ink stamp on, the rustle of freshly dried tea-leaves tickling Mischa's eardrums. Through the ruffling of the paper bag, the clink of glass, and the tap of his shoes on tile, Mischa hid her stuttering answer between the ambient sounds of the kitchen. She found it was easier to speak with other noises detracting from her own twitches and notches.

"You live alone but you're social."

He was over by the sink now, filling an iron kettle with water from the long drooping neck of the tap, nodding as if her sudden leap in logic was as perfectly sound as saying good morning in passing. A swift up and down tilt of the chin. Just once. Mischa, peculiarly, thought that was _him_. Just once. That was all he ever needed. As precise and clinical as this kitchen. _His kitchen_.

"How do you know that?"

Blink, blink, blink. Clip, clip, clip. Tip, tap, tat. So many noises to hide behind, and Mischa took refuge in them all. In the sound of the water rushing, slopping into the kettle with a trickle, she saw herself and Doctor Lecter opening the large front door of his home, a big plank of mahogany with a shiny brass knob, glistening red knots agleam in the wood, saw them walking in, Doctor Lecter offering to take her rucksack and suitcase, opening a side door in the hallway, storing them away for later in the shadowed room, but she saw.

"There's a large cloak room in the hallway, but there's only a few coats and jackets within. One size. Mens. Same general style, same p-person."

Doctor Lecter put the kettle on the stove beside them, a low keening whistle taking up the drop of the waters silence, and, afresh, Mischa was happy with the sound. She's happy with any sound. She loathes silence. Silence reminds her of the white place, the blood, the-...

"And the last?"

The last? Ah, yes, _social._ Why did she think he was social? Mischa was picking at the seam of her jeans by her thigh, twanging her thumb nail across the thread, and she realised her thoughts were very much like those stitches. Zigzagging, leaping, but linear in an unusual way that often had Mischa playing catch up with her own thoughts and observations. Things came to her sometimes, in winks and glimmers, they were just there, waiting, and it took Mischa time to zigzag her way to it to find how she got there, like following and picking the seam of her jeans.

"You have a cloak room, not a coat rack like most people. You have large quantities of guests over at the same time. I would have first thought it might have been more business over pleasure, perhaps a group of colleagues going over the latest publishing in the medical journals, psychiatrists do that sort of thing, don't they? But your dining room is the loudest room in this house."

Winks and glimmers, Mischa followed the thread of her thoughts. Yes. The dining room was the loudest room in the house, and, in her humble opinion, the nicest. Mischa liked the dining room a lot, in fact. With it's darker pallet, flowers and design, there was life in those walls, a happy place filled with the scrape of knife and fork on crockery, the aroma of well cooked food in the air, quips given over chuckles and compliments, _life. _That dining room had _life_.

Doctor Lecter went back to the kettle when the whistling was highest, drawing it from the flame of the stove, the click of the dial turning off, he brought it back over to the glass teapot, his steps louder now and, Mischa realised, he might have picked up on her distrust of silence for he had been eerily quiet when moving around the other rooms of this house. _He's purposefully making noise_. Giving her noises to duck behind, detracting from her own raspy voice and stuttering. Plucking the top of the teapot off, clinking it off the tray intentionally, he began to fill the teapot with water, glancing up at her, one pale brow arched high, a small smile hinting at his mouth through the splash of water.

"Loudest room?"

Loudest? Is that what she had said? Well, Mischa supposed, it was true in a way. Rooms, like people, had a personality. A taste, a flavour, a _voice_. This kitchen's voice was a dead thing, raspy and hollow. Silent. Her cupboard had screamed bitterly, the cries of an abandoned infant. Gryffindor's common room had exploded with the sound of fireworks flaring in the night sky. The chamber of secrets had rustled like scales brushing marble. Memories, to Mischa, were never really memories. She didn't remember like most. Hers were an exploration of the senses, both present at the time and later transplanted by imagination. Imagination Mischa had trouble controlling. There was a bleed-over sometimes, actuality combining with imagination, but that didn't make them any less real. Not to Mischa. Doctor Lecter's dining room had sang with the voice of a choir boy, one of those semisweet hymns, where it was a single boy lit by candle, singing in soprano and falsetto.

"You've put the most of yourself in that room. The others, the living rooms, the bedroom, they're all stitched together for aesthetics. Voiceless."

The hot water in the glass teapot swirled, delving and dipping and whirling up the brittle black leaves of the tea, seeping the water in stipples of grey and purple. Earl Grey. Mischa watched the water. She liked the way the colours spread through the pristine liquid, dancing and smearing where it went, darker and darker until, there, at the bottom, where the leaves were beginning to rest, there was only blackness.

"But the dining room is different? It is… Louder?"

Doctor Lecter left the tea pot alone for a while, letting the tea brew, and retook his seat. Mischa, with his focus exclusively back on her, was back to vigorously picking at the seam of her jeans, at the seam of her thoughts, back to tip, tap, tatting, back to M-M-M-Mischa. She felt unsure, like a quill paused, hovering over a letter, letting drops of ink splash parchment in its self-doubt and timidness. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or even hours before she spoke again. Time, like places, felt impermanent, always shifting, wasted in reckoning.

"The fire place is well used. The stones at the back are black. The wallpaper is awash of blue and green stripes. You, from the suit jackets in the closet, to what you're wearing now, like stripes and dark blue. The green matches the herb garden on the side of the room, neatly trimmed, cared for. You spend a lot of time there, tending to those herbs. There's fresh flowers on the mantle. So you spend a lot of effort in that room. The centre pieces on the large dining room table are freshly cut and formed too, aren't they? Their leaves are still plump. Recently cut roses. The petals haven't wilted a bit. A shade on the artisan side, so, I think, you made them yourself. You take pride in that room. Pleasure. With the cloak room and the dining room, well, dinner parties. Social."

Doctor Lecter took the two cups and poured them both some tea, sliding one across the metal towards her. Mischa was all to happy to grab it, to have her hands do something other than follow seams and pick at threads because, then, maybe her thoughts wouldn't either. She held the cup tightly between her hands, even when the heat started to burn her palms, she only held on tighter. Doctor Lecter was smiling now, not that small smile they shared in both features and mannerisms, but one full of luminosity, stretched wide over his face like a fat cat soaking and preening in the sun.

"You're a very smart girl, aren't you, Mischa?"

Voldemort had called her smart, once. Tom Riddle always calls her smart. So had Albus. Snape. And Petunia, in spite. And Draco as an affront. She was normally called smart on the trail end of being told she was something crazy, outsider-ish, a freak seeing things she shouldn't see, or observing things she had no right observing. _Crank that neck down. Keep the eyes away. Don't see. Don't think. Don't… Be. _Mischa stumbled again.

"I-I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean anything by it, I was j-just-"

Doctor Lecter took a sip of his own tea before he gently placed it before him and, yes, Mischa had been right. Each of his movements were fine, eased, seasoned, like her speech had once been.

"Don't ever apologize for being observant or smart. A keen eye is worth more than any charm. It will take you far in life. Never lose that."

He said it kindly, with a dash of conspiracy, as if he was letting her in on life's biggest secret.

"There was still no need for me to be so… Rude."

Calling someone's kitchen a dead heartbeat was rude, wasn't it? Mischa didn't know. Shame, really. Aunt Petunia had spent nearly a life time whipping the 'freakishness' out of her, but had never bothered to try and instil manners, how to speak or read, or anything outside Mischa's chores and cupboard. In the end, she knew how to decently clean and bleach a toilet, tend to rose bushes and flowerbeds, how to rightly fold sheets over mattresses and change linens, how to properly cook bacon, eggs and links of sausages just the way Vernon liked, a little bit crispy, but she couldn't carry on a conversation like a civilized person for the life of her.

Doctor Lecter ran a finger around the rim of his cup and Mischa took a gulp of her own, hoping, along with it, the bitter hurt she felt for her aunt and uncle, her life in general, would swish down with it, like swill being drained into the sewer. Half of the tea was gone in one swig, no savouring for her. The boiling water burnt her tongue, cindered down her throat and flared in her gut, and it hurt, but it was warm, and lately, Mischa would do pretty much anything to shirk off this never-ending arctic numbness that had settled over her after _after_.

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. And, I believe, you are anything but weak, Mischa."

It was an open invitation, Mischa knew, courteously given, to speak of things she didn't want to speak about. Tom, the white place, the _after_ she couldn't quite remember, where imagination and flares in her senses inhabited her like a skin suit, and even if she didn't have the statute of secrecy hanging over her head, Mischa still would not, ever, break her silence on it. That was the _one_ silence she could live with. So, instead, she haggled sideways.

"Eric Hoffer. The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms."

Doctor Lecter grinned, back to the small smile, and left the tea to the side, folding his hands together in front of him, leaning slightly over the table, towards her. Normally, Mischa would find the act intrusive, she favoured her personal space, but right now, as the stammering, child like mess she was, she found it comfortable some one, any one, would want to be so close to her. Like a safety blanket, she marinated in his confidence and turned it into her own. She could do this. Six months. Cottage, sea salt and butterflies. Something finally, irrevocably _hers_ and hers alone. Not Dudley's. Not a prophecies. Her cottage wouldn't belong to the greater good or some other obtuse concept. Not anybodies or anything's but her own.

"Correct. Do you enjoy reading?"

She'd stolen a torch from uncle Vernon's tool box once. One of those small plastic ones that you had to hit against your hand to flicker the light on because the switch was faulty. She'd had it for years, hidden under her cot in the cupboard, and, even now, shipped to America, that very same torch was back in her suitcase. She had used it in her cupboard, after she had counted three thousand and six hundred seconds, an hour whittled to seconds, after she had heard aunt Petunia's last creaking step on the top decking at night. She would then pull out bent books Dudley had thrown away in the bin, having never been one to read, or any magazine she had managed to pilfer from the letter box before Petunia had managed to collect the mail, and she would stay up, with her little torch and her water stained books and bent magazines, and she would read.

Or try to. Before Petunia had been forced to let her to go to school after a neighbour had spotted Mischa in the kitchen window while they were mowing the lawn, Mischa had only herself and her books and magazines to try and learn to read from. She'd spend hours huddled in there, going A, I, E, O, U, like the puppets on sesame street she would sometimes see when Dudley watched the telly, and she would go through, running her fingers over curves and dots and she had smiled and laughed. Quietly, of course. Petunia would come, or worse, Vernon, if she was ever to loud. She still remembered the first word she had ever been able to read in its entirety without a mistake.

_Obituary_. Turns out her magazine had been a pamphlet from the local funeral home and she had, unwittingly, been reading and giggling over eulogies and caskets. She had been ever since, in a comical way. Ironic, in hindsight. Still, the smell and sound of flipping laminated paper and smudged ink on crinkled page was still one of her favourites.

"I try to read when I can."

It was no definitive answer. Mischa didn't have any explicit answers for or about herself. All she really knew was survival and war. Ask her how to escape a fiendfyre and she could give you twelve different scenarios. Ask her how to destroy a Horcrux, and you could have an hour long lecture. Ask her how to infiltrate a ministry, and she could give you a blow by blow plan. Ask her what she does in her spare time and all you'll get is a blink, clip and a tat.

"Well, what else do you enjoy?"

Enjoy? Well… She was top at defence against the dark arts, potions and herbology at Hogwarts. Mischa was also seeker in the Gryffindor quidditch team. Top since her father, in fact. Did… Did that count? However, those were wizarding terms lost on muggles, and Mischa spent a while trying to plug them into something recognizable from this world.

"I'm good at sports, chemistry and the b-botanical sciences. I scored top of my classes in all t-tt-t-three."

It was like she was in a job interview. Please hire me. Look, I'm not completely wrecked goods. I am useful for something. I can tend your gardens if you want? Fetch a ball? Juggle? Just don't kick me out, please.

"Ah, but being good at something does not equate to enjoying it. One can be good at chess, yet hate the game itself."

Mischa took the last gulp of her tea and placed the cup down, perhaps a little too hard by the way the glass chinked off the metal, but she blinked and picked and tatted and… Nothing came.

"I… I... I..."

Doctor Lecter reached over the distance between them, and she felt his large palm settle over her forearm. It was heavy and warm, thin fingered like her own, like nanny Annie's, and for the first time in a very long while, perhaps all the way back to since she could first remember, Mischa didn't want to snatch her own limb away from the touch. There was something reassuring in that large hand, in the nimble fingers, like a ship lost at sea, bobbing and swaying, and the hand an anchor, grounding Mischa through the rocky waves that had, since she had woken up in Saint Mungo's, been battering her left and right. For the first time, she felt calm.

"It is okay to say you do not know, Mischa. Perhaps, we can find something you enjoy together, yes?"

No, it was not okay to say she did not know. Not to Mischa. Saying she did not know to aunt Petunia or uncle Vernon meant pain and being thrown by the scruff of her neck right back into her cupboard. Saying she do not know at Hogwarts meant ridicule and disdain because, well, her mother and father had been so bright, so very fucking clever, and she was meant to be them, she was meant to fill their shoes and all she had was crooked chickens feet. Saying she did not know in the war meant death. So much death. So, no. Mischa didn't like saying she did not know, because not knowing meant pain and punishment and death.

Yet, it was the truth. Mischa did not know what she enjoyed, no one had ever thought to ask her before, and, truthfully, she did not know many things. She didn't know what it was like to have a normal family. She did not know what it was like to laugh without caution. She did not know what it was like to play tag, or hopscotch, or tea parties like all the other children. She did not know what other sixteen year old's did, or how they did it, or what they worried about, or why they worried at all, when they didn't have a megalomaniac hot on their tail. _Mischa did not know. _

And she realised, with a sense of dawning sunrise, what Doctor Lecter was really asking. He was not offering her a chance at figuring out what board games she liked. Neither was he offering her a chance to pick out a hobby. Nor was he offering the chance to discover her likes or dislikes. He was offering her a chance. Just a chance. A chance at taking back a life not lived, chances not taken, to see what, perhaps, it would be like with a family, what it would be like to have a home, a real one, to know what sixteen year old's, normal sixteen year old's, did and worried about, and to find out who she was without the all the looming shadows and smokes of war and death. A life outside of prophecies and the greater good. Mischa troubled her bottom lip, and although she let the question drift between them in the ticks of a clock somewhere back in the hallway, she already knew her answer to the unfired question.

"I-I think I would like that."

Doctor Lecter's respondent smile was one of happiness growing, like spring flowers in bloom. Mischa could see the bud from deep inside the glint of his dark eyes as it dispersed, like petals opening to sunbeams, into every other part of him. Mischa thought he might have been the type of person who smiled with more than his mouth, it was in every other part of him, his smile was in his voice, not his lips, and in the way his shoulders relaxed, and it was a beautiful smile. Like those resplendent antique mirrors Doctor Lecter had littered around his home, Mischa found herself reflecting it straight back.

"I know this is not an easy time for you. And I will not ask you to speak of it before you are ready. I also know I am nothing but a stranger to you, and as I have been..."

He seemed to search for the right word and, Mischa wondered, if he too felt slugs squelching between his fingers.

"Informed of your life thus far, I know you are at a disadvantage. However, I am hoping within time there might become some form of familiarity between us, if not kinship. I would very much like to get to know you, if you would allow me to."

Anew, Mischa kept quiet. If the truth was that there were many things she did not know, then, simultaneously, the truth was there were many things Doctor Lecter did not know. Of her? Only half truths, a dossier redacted with giant chunks of blacked out text in slicing crimson ink. And, truly, she believed Doctor Lecter would not want to know. Mischa sure didn't. _Answers kill. _In her repose, Doctor Lecter gracefully and tastefully pushed on.

"When I was young, I too lost my family. My father, sister and mo-… My father and sister died. I was orphaned. When I, myself, was sixteen, I was adopted by my own uncle, Robert and his wife, Lady Murasaki."

The similarities sat unpleasantly in her stomach, like rancid meat filled with squirming maggots that wiggled in the very nethermost of her intestines. Life was just a cycle, a never ending wheel, spokes spinning and spinning and spinning. Life liked repeating the same jokes, like the distant cousin who told the same jape every Christmas, although no one found it funny, less so seven years later. Alike a man who was orphaned and adopted by his own strange uncle, who later went on to adopt his own orphaned niece. Rinse. Repeat. Laugh.

"France."

Doctor Lecter cocked his brow at her.

"The little roll in your R's. A lingering French accent."

He patted her arm again before he went back to his chilled tea. The cup looked minuscule in his hands.

"There it is again, that keen eye. Yes, my uncle and aunt lived in France and I too enjoyed the country for a time before I emigrated to America. Have you ever been to France?"

No. This, Baltimore, America was the farthest Mischa had ever been, and even so, all she had thus far seen was an apparition point, a train, it's thronged station, Doctor Lecter's Bentley, and now, this house. But, again, the chance was there. She could go to Washington. The Grand Canyon. Yellow Stone park. Maybe, she could even go to the butterfly house in Ladew Topiary gardens, she had seen it advertised in a pamphlet lining the turnstiles of Penn Station. So many choices, so many chances. She felt overwhelmed. Now… Mischa had survived, barely, but she had and, now, of all times, she was realising what that meant. She was alive and she could travel, she could, without the fear of war or anything else, see and live. She could do it all. Of course, she said none of this.

"I knew a French woman and her sister. They trilled their R's the same way."

Mischa looked at Hannibal, really looked for the first time, jade eye to dark, and, there, arching around the pupil, she saw flecks of burgundy in his eye. The lambency of red comforted her more than it ever should. They, these two strangers, down to the bones of it, were not so different in the broad strokes of it all. Nevertheless, there was one difference. Mischa had killed Voldemort but she had not-… The Horcrux… She had continued-… She had enjo-… Don't think of it. Don't think of many things. Keep the redacted places of her memories as just that, blank spots in a vacuous void. _Take the chance being offered to you. __A chance to start again._

On the sixteenth tick of the clock in the hallway, Mischa opened up a little. It was riddled with stuttering and stammering, laden with repeated words caught in the web of her spluttering speech, a butterfly with a bent wing, but there it was, a part of herself, the only part she actually knew, a chip of truth that she had told no one before, something no one had asked of her before.

"I enjoy butterflies. I collect them sometimes, when and where I can. And… Peppermint tea dashed with honey. I like, uh, plants. I kept my aunt Petunia's garden for her and everybody used to say it was the best on the block."

It wasn't a brag or boast. There was no Dudley gloating in her voice. She told it very much like Doctor Lecter had spoken to her, as if it was a secret. Her gaze fell to her empty glass and she stared, reaching out to pick it up, watching as she swirled the dregs around the bottom.

"And that made you feel proud?"

Proud? Yes. Proud. She had felt proud. Sometimes, as with her imagination, Mischa had trouble controlling her emotions and putting names to their many faces. She felt them alright, more often not too much, too fucking much, but she had always had trouble saying when or how she was sad, or angry, or scared, and usually, like following the threads of her thoughts, the name of the emotion only came later, much later. When she had time to think clearly and look back and say, oh, that was what that was. Sometimes, she couldn't even do that and was only left with the phantom of the sensation.

"They didn't know it was me, of course. Petunia would only let me out the cupbo-… I used to do the gardening at night. So the neighbours wouldn't see. But… Yes. I think I was proud of it. Growing something with your own two hands, watching it bloom or flower or grow, there's something special in that, isn't there? Knowing it was you who did it, that is was your hands that allowed it to happen."

Doctor Lecter finished his own cup before he spoke, but, again, he was back to smiling. Mischa didn't meet his eyes again.

"There is something very special in it, indeed. I'll say, we have a garden in the back, and, unfairly, I have been undue to it. Perhaps tomorrow we can head to the market and pick up some tools and seeds, and you can build your very own garden here?"

Mischa's own garden, like in the cottage she pictured in her mind. She liked the thought of that. She liked it very much.

"Some Larkspur, lavender and violet prairie flowers would look nice, near the patio outside the dining room. They would settle with the blue and the green."

Hannibal poured them both some more tea. His forefinger brushed her own as she passed him the cup. Oddly, she didn't flinch.

"I take it purple is your favourite colour?"

Mischa shrugged. She liked every colour, as long as it wasn't white. However, yes. She liked purple more than the rest. Purple reminded her of sunset and sunrise. The shadows under eyes after sleepless nights. Hemlock blooming in shaded broken places. Bruises on skin. The reflection of the sky in the deepest part of water, rippling it to indigo. Eggplants fat and ripe. There was a bittersweetness about that colour purple. A bittersweet nostalgia that Mischa could appreciate all too well. Like the choir boy singing all by himself.

"I think so."

Hannibal's gaze drifted away and so did his voice, light and away. Stars in the night sky.

"It was my sisters too."

Slowly, Mischa stretched up, towards her neck, at the back, and unhooked the chain of the necklace hiding underneath her jumper. Taking the time to feel the heat of the gold, the weight of the locket, Mischa brushed her thumb over the face before she handed it over to Hannibal.

"Nanny Ann-… Ausra gave that to me before she died. I thought the picture inside was me-… Well, I think it rightfully belongs to you."

Hannibal took it from her and held it for a while before he popped the lock and gazed down at the pictures inside, two little black and white photos of children smiling, one gummy, one poised even for his young age. Mischa could still see the boy in the man, in the corner of his lip, the swish of his eyeline, in the places between places, where time could never fully reach. Slowly, he closed the locket, the snap of it sounded like a slamming door in the weighty silence, but instead of pocketing it like Mischa thought he would, he reached for her hand, placed it, still warm, in her palm and closed her fingers around it.

"No. It is yours. To remind you who you are, even if you do not share the name. A Lecter. You look precisely like her, if she had the time to bloom as you have..."

Hannibal trailed off, seemingly lost and Mischa felt like she was swelling. She was undecided with whether it was a good or bad impression. She supposed most feelings were like that, neither good nor bad, they just... _were_. Something, a lanky shadow of fine pressed lines and sharp corners, flickered in the corner of her eye. Mischa dared not look. Finally, Hannibal pulled his hand away and Mischa found herself putting the locket back on, swivelling in her seat just so, so the shadow was at her back.

"Best not dwell on times past. For, here with me now, is a Mischa all her own."

Hannibal lifted his cup of tea to hers, as she delicately clinked them together as if they were champaign flutes toasting. She didn't know whether they were toasting her, this Mischa, or the Mischa gone and dead long before her time, like so many others, or, perhaps, both. In the end, Mischa was okay with that. For, she knew, there was no singular place people went to die. They lived on, through them, us, for better for worse, they lived on. Stars in the sky and twinkles in the eye.

_And that's what scared her most._

"How utterly heart-warming. But you are not quite your own, are you? I am here, after all. Do you really believe he would be toasting you if he knew the truth? I would, of course. All the lies and the tricks! Spectacular, really. Round of applause, my dear girl. I could not be prouder. Of course, I currently can't, being discorporated and what not, but you get my sentimentality, do you not, Mischa? What am I asking? Of course you do. You always have and you always will."

Over the rim of her glass, before tea could touch lip, Mischa whispered back to the shadow at her back. She knew his face was smiling. It was always bloody smiling lately.

"Fuck off, Tom."

Hannibal blinked at her.

"Excuse me?"

And Mischa smiled as if nothing was wrong, even when, after she spoke, Tom's voice rang with laughter, matching the tick of the clock, the clink of glass and the tip, tap, tat of her tongue. Bastard.

"I said where's this tea from? It's lovely."

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**QUICK UPDATE: **As you can likely tell, there's been a little bit of a change in plans on the whole pairing side. Last chapter I did say Mischa would have no pairing, but well, I couldn't help myself lmao. So, Tom Riddle is in this fic, surprise! Although, I do want to point out this isn't an hallucination, or some psychosis Mischa is going through. I will explain what and how Tom Riddle is there, through this fic, but she isn't imagining him.

As for the reason I've decided to pair Tom with Mischa, I think its sort of poetic, in a way, Tom and Mischa sort of mirror each other like Hannibal and Will, and there's a sort of symmetry between that reflection I really like in my writing. I don't want to give too much away, of course, like how Tom survived and all that, but, there it is. I just wanted to keep you guys informed encase you missed the change in the pairings in the summary, don't like this pairing, and then become upset when it happens. So, if you don't like it, I don't blame you, this is not going to be a fluffy romance, no good Tomarry romances should be in my book, let alone one set in Hannibal's world, but it's the direction I'm taking as it's going to be fun exploring and fits in well with the theme, feel and scope of this fic I'm aiming for.

As for face claims, I rather like the thought of Natsya Kusakina for Mischa, she has a child-like innocence about her, and Tom Hughes for Tom Riddle. Who do you guys picture when you think of Tom Riddle? Or even Mischa?

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**Thank you all **for the wonderful reviews, follows and favourites. I've literally re-read each review over and over again when writing this chapter up, and they all made me smile, so, really thank you! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and what is to come, and as always, if you can spare the time, have something to say, or just even a smiley face to let me know you enjoyed the chapter, hit up a review.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER TWO: A ROOM, IN A HOUSE, ON A STREET.**

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Mischa Potter's P.O.V

The house wasn't the same for Mischa any more. Then again, Mischa had only ever known Godric's Hollow as it had been the one time she had visited, fallen to ruin many a year ago even before then. Rubble had benched, dust had blanketed and age had worn the colours away like a great wave crashing against cliff, leaving nothing behind but a crown of salt crust. Yet, here, in her dream, the devastation of her nursery was far less reaching. Here, in her dream, it was just a room, in a house, on a street. Or, perhaps, because she knew she was dreaming, with that bleary cognisance that lucidity offers, the desolation of this room was, in some way, poetically hilarious of the shambles her own life had reversed into. From ruin she came, and so it was to ruin she would return.

This room is where it all began. Right here. At her crib. Mischa Potter, the child who likely would have grown up to be as pridefully problematic as her father, or as intelligently erratic as her mother, had died here along with her parents. In her place was herself, this Mischa, The-Girl-Who-Lived, and, like the loggerhead sea turtles who returned to the very beach they were born after decades at sea, Mischa found herself returning to this little nursery on the current of her dream. Sitting in the half broken rocker perched in the corner of the room, Mischa rocked back and forth, the creak of the floorboards steadying her tapping fingers. _He _came then.

The irony was not lost on Mischa, as the slip of the wall closet on the wall groaned, and, from the dark cupboard, slithered out Tom Riddle like a bogeyman crawling out of a dithering child's bed. Here they both were, bogeyman and lost sea turtle, back where it all began. This Tom Riddle looked different to what she had known previously, both as egotist Voldemort and as equally megalomaniac teenage boy locked in a diary. He was older than the latter, but younger than the former, visibly in his early thirties, in his fifties or sixties in reality. Their kind aged slower. Still, if she had to guess precisely, she would guess he was fifty-four, although he looked thirty. The age he had been the night he had slain her mother and father and had set them both on a path neither one of them had been able to scramble off since.

Tom Riddle was a tall man, always a head above others. Lithe too. Broad shouldered and long limbed. And there was something wrong with the way he walked, a gait too prowling, too easy, gliding some would say, effortless others, that was at odds with his Savile Row suit. The casualness of his movements did not sit well with clothes so crisp. Neither did the way he kept his suit jacket off, the unspoiled white Oxford shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, the top two buttons undone. Predators, Mischa thought, were never meant to look so lax and unstrained. It wasn't fair in the hunt. He was pale still, nearly as pale as Voldemort, the mutilated creature he had become, but there was a slight blistering to his nose now, a nose thin and aristocratic, and his sharp cheeks, blood pumping under translucent skin.

He even had his old blue eyes back. Blue eyes so cold and luminous they reminded Mischa of the underbelly of glaciers in the arctic sea. Mischa, when she had first started to see and hear this Tom, strapped to a healing bed, she had thought his eyes to be nothing but crystal and frigid, things that knew no warmth or heat or passion. Dead eyes for a dead soul, she had thought. Now, however, she saw things differently. They were fire in water, if you could imagine such a thing, fervour ensnared in a blizzard. The hottest fires, they said, always burned blue, and there was nothing bluer than Tom's eyes. As he sauntered towards her crib, _her crib_, and leaned on the railing, finally settling those damned blue eyes on her, who was still rocking back and forth in the corner, Mischa, contrary to popular belief, did not hate him.

It seemed pointless and rudimentary to hate someone like Tom. After everything they had been through, everything _he _had put her through, them through, every wound and insult and near fucking death experience, Mischa thought, perhaps, she knew Tom Riddle better than most, better than either she or he was comfortable with, in his current form or any other, and through it all, Mischa had come to a weary understanding of the person opposite her. Tom Riddle was less than human, you could feel it in his presence, a jarring drop in the stomach that heralded a beast stalking you through a woods, but, simultaneously, he was so much more than a man. He was a product of nature. More akin to a forest fire or earthquake, and, as one did not normally hate the forest fire for the houses it burned down, the loved ones it devoured for fuel, or the destruction it wrought, it seemed, to Mischa at least, as equally impossible to hate Tom Riddle. Nevertheless, she could be utterly enraged by the very sight of him, even if there was no hate.

"You shouldn't be here."

Mischa pointedly refused to look at him directly, to meet those wintry eyes, even if she felt his gaze tingling at the soft skin of her neck, right over her beating pulse, as her rocking picked up pace in her agitation. The creaks coming louder, harder, faster. This was the first time Mischa had ever engaged him without him previously prodding her ire into conversation. Given, that conversation was normally blunt, short, a simple curse and an ever polite 'fuck off!', but… Still.

For a long time Mischa thought if she just ignored him, refused to acknowledge his existence, he would fade away like a bad dream. She, after all, had killed Voldemort, destroyed his Horcruxes, and had been killed too, destroying the last shard of his filthy soul hidden within her, and really, he shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be anywhere. _He was dead. _Yet, here he was, as alive as anybody else, at least to her, no one else seemed to see the bastard, and no matter how tightly she screwed her eyes shut, how hard she pretended she couldn't hear him, see him, smell him when he came too close,_ feel him,_ he wasn't going away. Not permanently like she wanted. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tom's head canter to the side like a curious puppy, and his voice was ever as it had been, in all his incarnations, cool, keen, clean and silken.

"Where would I be but with you?"

Mischa laughed and she laughed hard. She couldn't help it. Not really. To many others, it might have sounded romantic, intimate, amorous even. A declaration of undying devotion and all that sappy poetry written on the inside of cheap cards peddled for a quid on valentines day. _But Mischa knew Tom. _To her, it sounded like a threat. _I'm here. I'm always going to be here. You can't get rid of me. _Couldn't she? This was her mind. Her dream. Her Merlin damned body.

"This is _my_ dream. You may have violated my dreams in life, but like hell will you continue to do so in death. _Get out._"

It was like watching a telly, when a programme began to glitch, and the faces of the people would pixelate and spasm in cacophonous globs. Tom splintered and, watching it, the colours of him blur, the outline spiking in rising juts, gave her gratification that hardly anything else ever did any more. Yet, it didn't last for long, too short in Mischa's books, before Tom regained his composure, materializing once more, rolling his neck and tugging on the hem of his shirt. He wasn't fooling her, even as he ran one of those long fingered hands through his curls, the picture of perfect composure. She was in control now. Not him. Never him. Never again.

"Now, now, don't be hasty, Mischa. It was Voldemort who forced his way into your vulnerable sleeping mind. I, however, you will see, have always been here. Have I not? Ever since you sat in this very crib squealing your lungs out. I have to wonder, have you ever stopped screaming since?"

Mischa rolled her jaw. He already knew the answer as much as she did. In some form or shape, she had been screaming her entire life. But she wasn't the only one, was she? Tom Riddle had been screaming his entire life too. Hers had been a restful sort of scream, given in sacrifice, suicide, abuse and duty. Tom's had been hewn from rage, a war cry, smouldering everything he had touched to flaky ash. Her included. Mischa also remembered the way Voldemort had screamed right before he died. Mouth agape, silent, _scared_.

Mischa saw Tom's jaw twitch, just a constriction, barely noticeable, but she saw, just as he likely saw what she was thinking of, what she was remembering, or was it what this Tom Riddle was remembering? The lines blurred in her dreams. When she was awake too, if she was being honest. It was hard, getting harder, to tell where he finished and she began. Maybe she had never been able to tell. Maybe it was a thought that neither belonged to one or the other but both. Even when Voldemort had been alive, sometimes, terribly, Mischa would get the ominous feeling they were doing the same thing at the same time. Showering. Eating. Drinking. Mundane things. Thinking the same thing. Feeling the same thing. But Voldemort was dead and she was no longer a Horcrux. She wasn't. She wasn't? _She wasn't. _

"_Get. Out._"

Tom flickered again, like a reflection in a pond that she had thrown a pebble into, undulating in waves. Whatever this Tom Riddle was, whatever shred of him was left that was stubbornly clinging to her, after the final battle, he was weak. He knew it. She knew it. He despised it. She adored it. The scales had shifted, and, for once in her sorry life, it was in her favour. Merlin damn her, there was a lewd sort of pleasure to be taken in that. This was her mind. Her soul. Her body. Whatever he was now, whatever she was, Horcrux or not, his stain couldn't bind her. She was in control.

_Partially. _

After all, it would be better for all involved if she didn't see him at all, or hear him, or feel him, wouldn't it? He should be gone. That was the prophecy wasn't it? She had done everything Dumbledore had said, forfeited her own life, and though it was never verbally said, the implication had been clear. Come death or life, Tom was meant to be gone and she was meant to have her life back, or at least peace away from him in the cold embrace of death.

Then how was he still here? During the day, she had more power, more control. Enough to shove him back into nothing but a looming shadow, a haunting voice, something lurking and skulking in the corners of her gaze. However, in her dreams, he, whatever he was now, came at her full force. He wore his human suit and he taunted and prodded and needled and, dammit it, whatever the fuck he was, he was growing stronger by the day.

Tom managing to materialize all over again was proof enough of that. Back in Saint Mungo's, all she had needed to do was think of him disappearing, even in her dreams where he seemed strongest, and he would vanish. Pushed down and locked away somewhere deep inside. It could be hours or days before he managed to clamber right back out. Back then, he had only been a voice and a pair of blue eyes on her closed eyelids, like the wind rustling through the branches of a tree, unintelligible, nothing but a rattle and a breeze. Then he was a black spot in the corner of her eye that would vanish when she looked at it, her hissing name winding around her head in his voice like a python coiling. Missssschaaaaa. Then he was a shadow on the floor, taunting. Then he had a face. A body. A voice too loud for her head. And here he was tonight, fully formed, and, she wondered, would he be this way too when she awoke?

"Someone is feeling rather touchy tonight."

The rocking stopped.

"You shouldn't be here. You're dead. I killed you. Remember?"

Mischa sprung up from the rocker, striking, bare feet pounding on the hardwood flooring, over the rubble, bang, bang, bang, right up to him and there, he took a single step back. It wasn't much, just a step, but watching it, that left foot dart back, away, made her feel more victorious than standing over Voldemort's corpse, right before she lost it and began to-. No. That was _him_. It had to be. It was _always_ him. Still, it wasn't enough. It shouldn't be a single step. She wanted him in the corner. Cowering. Kneeling. Every which way she could have him apart from standing tall, over her, pressing down.

She wanted him as scared as she had been. She wanted him as hurt and broken. She wanted Tom Riddle, for once, to feel what she had felt, every ounce of it, and pay the price for it like she had done for him her whole bloody life. She wanted him to wake up smothered in sweat, head splitting in two with what felt like icepicks being driven into his temples, the coppery taste of blood lingering on his tongue from the taste of flesh, as he was forced to live and see and feel through Nagini as he ordered her to eat some poor fucking muggle that had crossed the wrong street on the wrong fucking day. She wanted him to feel it all and so much more. Every nightmare. Every cut. Every loss. Everything.

"You were nothing but a malformed hunk of meat, do you remember that? A screechy waste of blood and flesh, crying to the night like a bleating sheep. I stood over you. I watched as you fought for breath, and, dear Tom, I did nothing. How did my boot feel when I stomped on you like the bug you are? Did it hurt? I hope it did."

His Horcrux, her, the… Thing inside had been pathetic. A wailing, sobbing, wretched little mass of blood and gore. She remembered it curled up tightly in the white-place, cradling itself, ill-shapen hands wringing into its own flesh, wrangling for breath as it slowly died. Nothing, and Mischa sincerely meant nothing, had made her so blissful as seeing that loathsome thing whither away, right at her feet. Perhaps, in that regard, she was as bad as the man in front of her. Yet, she thought she had a little vindication in it, that feeling of euphoria at seeing Tom Riddle, _the_ Tom Riddle, brought so fucking low at _her_ feet. And it was always at _her_ feet, wasn't it? No one had ever brought him so low, so weak, so vulnerable as she had. A sixteen year old child, and she had matched him step for step, down to Dante's Inferno they danced. That must have stung. Albus. The Ministry. The Order. Even her beloved Remus and Sirius had never kept up in Tom's tango. But she had. Moreover, she had _won. _

Tom, of course, did not like being reminded about how weak he had been, nor how weak he was still. She had gotten to him. Good. If Tom could get under her skin, Mischa could as easily chafe his own. They were like that, him and she, two very different sides of the same coin, but with all the same buttons, glossy pretty buttons too tempting not to press. Mischa saw a wave in his lips, tongue running over teeth, a flick in the corner of his closed mouth that told her his tongue was stroking over canine. _Go on, mother fucker. Try it. I have fangs too. _

Tom didn't do anything, he only stepped closer, toe to toe, nose to nose, and Mischa bit down hard on the pit of disappointment that she adamantly refused to acknowledge was even there to begin with. Instead, he was smiling, or as close to smiling as someone like Tom could mimic, all barren charm and cavernous wit, and Mischa hated it.

"Riddle me this, Mischa. How do you make a Horcrux?"

Mischa tutted as she span around, hoping her hair had whipped the bastard in the face with how close he had dared to come, as she strayed over to the nursery window, peering out of the stained and dusty pane of crackled glass. Outside was heavy with fog, places and houses less well remembered, but there, right outside Godric's Hollow's garden gate was the cemetery, no road or path, just dark solitary gravestones, where her parents were buried, when, in reality, the cemetery had been a ten minute walk away. She wondered if they could see them in the house, her and Tom, if they were spinning in their graves like rotisserie chickens, or if it had all really been inside her head, as this was, and there was no afterlife, nothing but this oppressive thick fog.

"I believe you already know the answer to that. You did make seven."

There was a flash of footsteps behind her, quick, like rain falling on a tin roof. The smell came next. Mint, the brisk kind from mint leaves you roll between your fingers, less sweet and more bitter, and something sour and tart, like Basilisk venom, dusted with treacle and honey. Mischa's fist balled at her side when his breath fluttered her locks over her shoulder, prickling at the soft skin behind her neck, raising the fine hairs there. He always came too fucking close, just as pitiless, suffocating and rampant as the blasted fog outside, incursive and transuding.

"Did I? Seven? Are you sure?"

Mischa twirled on the very balls of her feet and swung her fist. Yet, Tom wasn't there, he vanished with a puff and reappeared in the corner of the room, grinning that fucking grin at her and, Merlin, Jesus, Krishna, to every deity known to man, she swore it took every ounce of control she had left not to bend down, pick up a fallen roof support beam, march over there and keep swinging and smashing until those pearly teeth were nothing but tattered gums and pooling blood. Tom's grin grew brighter still, like the flash of a knife's edge in the moonlight.

"Answer the question, Mischa."

Tom was back at her crib, stretching in, fingering with what would have been, underneath the fat layer of grime, her old lilac baby blanket. That, Mischa thought, is what he did. He took and he tainted. Nevermore would she be able to remember that blanket without thinking of him touching it, contaminating it, implanting himself on something so everyday yet precious to her. Embedding himself on _her. _When, if, she dreamed of this place again, that baby blanket would be gone, she knew, off in another darker danker place, the chamber that sounded like ruffling scales and hisses, where she kept all things Tom in her memory.

"Horcruxes can only be made after committing a murder."

Tom lifted the blanket out, up and out like Hagrid had plucked her from the wreckage, by its crumpled corners, flicking it straight, folding, before slinging it over the wonky rail. He went for the bear next, the one she barely remembered, the one with the missing eye, and, of course the bastard went on to conjure the missing button eye back on before carefully placing it in the corner of the crib, smoothing out the sheets with a flippant wave of his hand. All the while talking like he was going through the motions of checking off a grocery list.

"Yes, the supreme act of evil, as good ol' Albus would say. But there is more is there not? Otherwise any old invalid with a wand and a bit of impulsivity would have twenty. Dolohov, you remember him don't you? He did nearly kill your mudblood after all. How many do you think he would have if it were so simple? So, what more is there?"

Tom liked that, didn't he? Cleaning up his messes. Hiding his trail. He was excellent at it too. Mischa snapped her fingers and the crib went back to what it should be. Decay and ruin. He may have concealed himself in life, but like fuck would she let him overwrite her own memories into something they weren't.

"It involves a spell and a… Horrific act purposefully preformed minutes after the murder has been committed."

Jade met blue in a clash of summer and winter, ice and fire, an Avada Kedavra cast in snow.

"Good. Now, tell me Mischa, how are you a Horcrux?"

Even in her own dream, her imagination didn't let her rest. Mischa bit her cheek so hard she could taste a rush of rust and copper. She pondered if she would wake up with a mouth full of blood, perhaps even having some bloom on the plush pillow of her bed. On the lavender pillow, it would look like a wine spill, she knew. Would she see Tom's face in the blotch or not?

"I _was_ a Horcrux. _Was_. You're dead and you shouldn't be here."

Tom cast his arms out, around the room, raising them up from his sides, sarcasm dripping from every vowel. As he stood there, arms spread, Mischa thought she saw the Vitruvian man in the silhouette of his form, the haughty incline of shoulder blade and the lordly joust of his strong chin. She would rather he be crucified.

"And yet, here I stand."

She could be the Roman who skewered him with the spear as Tom helplessly dangled by pierced palm and foot.

"You accidentally made me the night you murdered my parents. Do you want to do a re-enactment to help jog your memory? Tell you what, the bear can be me, I'll be you, and you can be my mother. Can you scream high enough? I suppose we can find out."

Tom dismissed her taunt like one would dismiss an errant fly buzzing around their head, with a sleek eye and a lip curl, but nothing much else. He thrust himself away from the crib, arms dropping to dip into the pockets of his finely pressed slacks as he ambled towards her with long, sure strides. The closer he came, the higher Mischa had to crane her neck to keep eye contact, obdurately refusing to be the one to break the battle of wills.

"Which is it? Are Horcruxes purposefully made, with spell and rite, or are they accidents? They can't be both, can they? How do you accidentally but purposefully make a Horcrux? Which one is it? Accident or purpose? Which one, Mischa?"

He began to stalk around her, leaving Mischa with no choice but to follow him lest he get at her back again, like two electrons revolving around one another, one neutron and one proton, life boiled down to its most basic principles of life, negative and positive pulls and pushes. Yet, still he echoed his question. _Which one, Mischa? Which one? Which one? Which one? _Mischa couldn't answer. Or, perhaps, she didn't want to. _Answers kill_. You see, in balance, positive cancelled out negative, accident opposed purpose, and Tom and Mischa strained and bled and fused into one atom of rival forces.

An abomination of nature that should have never existed. You couldn't accidentally and purposefully create a Horcrux, it was a paradox, an impossibility, yet, here they stood, and as far as Mischa knew, that _was _what had happened. How else had… This come to be? There was an answer there too, one that flittered across her mind, one that made everything _burn_. If accident and purpose was in convulsion over the variable of Horcrux… Then it was the variable that was wrong. Which meant…

No. Mischa couldn't trust a single thing Tom Riddle said, be it in intimate whisper or vehement shout. No one ever could when it came to Riddle. He twisted things up, contorted them, made lies true and truth into lies and you couldn't fall for it once or he had you right in his pretty little palm. In her silence, Tom propelled on, around and around and around.

"Yes, the death of both James and Lily Potter fulfilled one step in the grand programme of crafting a Horcrux, but tell me, Mischa, when did I have the time to complete the other acts required in creating one when the killing curse rebounded off you and struck me? In the mere second it took? When?"

Mischa violently shook her head, her hands coming up to rub and claw at her face, as if she could peel it right off and cast it away from her, as the world around her began to swim and swing and spin. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. She wanted to huddle and cry and block out everything. She wanted Tom to be gone and not gone because she was terrified of what or who she was without him. He had been there so long, since her birth practically, that, without him, was she even herself any longer? She wanted answers and yet, she didn't want them at all. She wanted and wanted and wanted until she ached with it all.

"You died. In a pathetic attempt to latch onto what sorry little life you had, what deranged piece of soul remained, it scrambled for any surface it could find. It found me."

None of this was real. None of it. Tom Riddle was dead. She was free. This was just a room. This was just a house. This was just a street. This was just a dream.

"Yes, because the thousands of other witches and wizards struck down by the killing curse all, too, lacked any sort of ambition for life. No. They simply took it. Do not stand there and try to tell me no other witch or wizard were never desperate enough for life that, if it was possible to create a Horcrux with the simple act of murder and the drive of survival instincts to throw a shard of soul out of your body into the closest object or person, that many would not have done so. Albus would have. We both know that. So, tell me. How. Are. You. A. Horcrux."

This time, Mischa did press her hands against her ears, so tightly her fingers bit against her scalp, the pounding of her heart bouncing off palm and echoing back inside herself in a never ending loop. Her eyes squeezed shut, clinched so hard she saw flares of horrid white light, and please, no… No… Not there… Not again.

"Go away Tom!"

It didn't work. It never did. Mischa couldn't shut him out because, really, he was inside her. Right in the very core. Mischa still felt him there, she felt it all and he was taking and tainting, and there was nothing she could do.

"Don't, Mischa. There's only so far you can run from this before you have to face it. Answer the question."

"Go away!"

"How are you a Horcrux?"

"GO AWAY!"

Mischa woke up in her bed at uncle Lecter's house, furled tightly into a ball under the fine cotton sheets and blankets, forehead pressing into locked knees, hands clamped over ears, eyes screwed shut and choking on blood from her chewed lip she had used to smother her screams and yells. Her scar was on fire. The world swam around her. She couldn't breathe. There was a rush of cold. Blankets snatched. Darkness gone. Safety gone. There was jagged sobbing hanging in the air. Her sobbing. Hands were on her shoulders. Lifting. She fought. She swore. She spat blood. The hands didn't leave. She bit. She kicked. She spat more blood. The hands stayed.

They pried her hands away from her ears. Pinned her arms down. She fought harder. She sobbed harder. Something wrapped around her. Sturdy but gentle. Something sweeping over her ragged sobs. Shushing noises. Murmurs. There was a large hand at her back. Rubbing circles. Always circles. Another hand on her head. Brushing back sweaty hair. Her head was pressed against a strong chest. She clung to it with white knuckles. Another heartbeat in her ear. Steady. Peaceful. Not her own frantic gallop and skip.

"That's it. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. It's over. I've got you. That's it. In. Out. Nice and steady. I've got you. I've got you."

In a room, in a house, on a street huddled Mischa Potter in Hannibal Lecter's arms, cradled and gently rocked back and forth as she sobbed and bled. She could not tell you how long she stayed like that. How long they rocked, or she sobbed, or he stroked her hair. She only knew three things. By the time her breathing was back under control, the blood was crusting on her chin and neck, on Doctor Lecter's shirt. Tom Riddle really was alive, he was not hallucination, and was somehow still inside her. Lastly, she was not a Horcrux.

She never had been.

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**NEXT CHAPTER:** Will Graham visits the local market for some dog food that Winston will like when he stumbles across an unlikely pair picking out Orchids and Chrysanthemums…

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**So, Boo or Woo? **

I don't normally update so fast, but I had some spare time today and this bit was already partially written up, as it was originally going to be a part of last chapter but with how big last chapter was, it got snipped off for this one, and keeping it as a stand alone chapter rather than gluing it into next one felt appropriate. I also know there was hardly any Hannibal, and still no Will yet, but, well, this is part of the plot and as I said, this is a real slow moving fic lmao. Still, Will comes swanning in next chapter, and best of all, little Winston! So, I hope that makes up for the wait, and I really do hope you liked this chapter as I'm real iffy about how Tom came off. I've never written Riddle before, and like Hannibal, he's proving to be a right bastard in pinning down. Still, at the moment, I think this is the best I've got, as I have a nasty habit of stalling in fics over characters and continually re-writing the same chapter and scrapping it, never posting again, and completely losing all inspiration for the fic, which I don't want to happen with this one lmao.

On the subject of inspiration, if any of you have any songs or playlists which you guys like, or make you think of characters such as Tom Riddle, Harry Potter, or Hannibal and Will, give us a shout! Music is my constant inspiration while writing, and any little help would be greatly appreciated.

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If you can, **drop a review. **If there's one thing that gets my fingers typing faster than music, it's reviews ;). And on that note, THANK YOU to everyone who reviewed last chapter. It means a lot, so this chapters for you guys. It's not a lot, but it's what I've got lol. And thank you to every one who followed and favourited!


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER THREE: WHIMSICALLY TRAGIC AND HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL.**

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Mischa Potter's P.O.V

There was something whimsically tragic about dead flowers. A sense hinting at the elegies and epics of waning beauty, the ravages of time, and the impermanence of the world. Perhaps, though, it could have been the type of flower resting in her hands, picking at the peeling label on the dusty flowerpot, that gave Mischa over to the fanciful misfortunes of life. There was something intrinsically distressing, insolently personal, and perhaps a little bit comical, about wilted lilies.

The one in her hands, much like her mother, was long gone. Far from any revival or hope. The plump petals were thin, translucent, crisped and gilded like burnt parchment. The pollen on the stamen was blackened, nothing but charcoal powder that, as her free thumb flicked at the little bobbled stem, tarnished the pad of her skin to cracked grey.

"Do you consider whether your mother's corpse looks similar after being in her grave for so long? I think if you were to touch her, she too would crumble to dust."

Well, Tom was still sore about the dream, now, wasn't he? Or sore about being pushed back against his will. Or sore Mischa had, in the end, the upper hand in their little barbed duel of tongue. Or sore that it had taken him nearly five hours to pull himself to corporeality. Or sore that Mischa was, as always, trying valiantly to ignore him. Tom was a sore person in general, Mischa thought. A bruise in mortal manner, aching when you recalled it existed.

Mischa smiled as best as she could at the vendor of the flower stall. She knew it wasn't a pretty smile. Mischa couldn't do pretty. It wavered on her face, one side pulled too high, the corner of her eye twitched, and, she was sure, it looked pained. Still, the man gave her a hesitant one back as Mischa put the shrivelled lily back where she had grabbed it from, before she resolutely walked away.

The little farmers market set under an overpass near an interstate, grimy concrete walls tinted to life with lurid graffiti, was bustling with people. Farmers hacking wares, plucking freshly choked chickens of their plumage, and beheading still jerking rabbits, mothers pushing prams, with babies bawling or babbling in blankets, old couples holding hands clicking by with canes, boys playing football with grazes on their knees. It was a pleasant, cheerful, spirited place.

Mischa hated it.

Yet, she would never say so. Hannibal Lecter appeared to enjoy this slight gurgle of unfettered life. Currently, he was three stalls away from her, pricing up what looked to be expensive cuts of fresh venison and piglet, as Mischa had roamed over to the nearest flower booth while he was busy. He was smiling amiably at the butcher, nodding in the right places, and, Mischa supposed, if Hannibal Lecter liked it, then she could too. She didn't like crowds or large noises, she couldn't get a good bearing, but as she saw Hannibal's grin grow a little, strangely, she liked seeing him happy. Yes, she thought. She could like it too.

The raucous throng swarming around her, like angry wasps from a shaken nest, also gave her perfect cover to bite back at the taunting voice forever goading her.

Mischa liked that _best_.

"My mother has a carcass and a crypt, at least. What do you have? Neither. Nothing. And soon, in time, even your name will be forgotten. Just a streak of muck on history's face."

Tugging her miniature trolley behind her, Mischa took to the next stall, keeping Hannibal in sight like she promised the older man before she had ventured off. Bending down to the ground, squatting on her haunches, she idly inspected the trays of orchids sprawling over the stall and into the street, a wave of purples and lilacs bleeding out into the world beyond their too small pots. Tom, dead and not so gone Tom, chuckled behind her.

"Oh, Mischa, you wound me so. Will you not remember me? I think you will. I think there'll be no other in your life that you will recollect in such… Vivid colours."

There was a calmness to flowers. A serenity that, like their sweet scent, suffused into the air and down into Mischa's cold pressed lungs. Tom's jeers couldn't reach her, not completely, in a bed of flowers. Saccharine had the tendency to take the sting out of bitterness.

"I won't live forever, Tom. When I die, you come with me. That's the problem with being trapped inside my head. You may plague my every Merlin damned step, but when I finally pop my clogs, I'm dragging you kicking and screaming with me."

Plucking up a few chosen orchids, she added them to the mounting heap of plants she was collecting in her trolley. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seve-

Her hand snapped back to her body as if the petals burnt her.

She could feel him before he came. She always could. Tom stepped up from her side, sauntered to her front, trampling on orchids that didn't quash under his airy body, into her line of vision, stooped right down to her, so close his own bent knees slipped around her own, nestled close. Caging her in. Trapping her. Too close. Always too fucking close.

He was garbed differently today, as if he could feel Baltimore's frigid spring weather. Black slacks, black shoes, black leather gloves, and a black rolled neck jumper made him seem impossibly pale, impossibly unearthly, and impossibly beautiful in a sea of brilliant hue and soul about him.

Tom Riddle was full of impossibilities, as Mischa was full of scars.

He lent his elbows on his knees, driving in tighter, nimble, long fingered hands linking between them in a knotted ball of black as he regarded her with those bright, clever eyes of his. When he spoke, she felt the flutter of his breath skirt across her wind whipped cheek. It was as cold as the spring breeze wafting around them.

"Are you sure you're going to die?"

Mischa's jaw clenched, and just because she could, just because she wanted Tom to _know _she could, her hand shot out once more, right through him, down to the Orchids to grab one up. Any at all. It came out of him like he was made of smoke, puffing before sealing in. She would plant this one last. She wouldn't water it. She'd watch it as it died. Mischa would do that to anything that Tom had touched, or had been touched by Tom.

Herself included.

"Everybody dies."

Mischa's heartbeat was often an echo, a faint thump, and horrendously, more than once, she had the passing belief that it may have been a resonance of Tom's heart and not her own pounding in the hollow of her chest. She only had a heartbeat because Tom did. She only existed because Tom did. She only lived because, in some style or shape or shade, Tom did.

When he was far away, it felt as if it, this heartbeat, was a small fire in a big fortress, perishing in the drafts, pulled too thin and too far to sustain two bodies. Yet, when he was close, as he was right then, it felt as if it was in a tiny chalet, the type that even the smallest of fires, the littlest of hearts, could thaw.

With Tom, Mischa is warm. Mischa has a heart. Mischa has a pulse that beats louder than the crashing waves of a tempestuous ocean.

Mischa only detested the whole _with _Tom bit of it all.

"You're not everybody, Mischa. You must know this by now."

Another shred of delightful praise, if it had come from anybody else. Tom only made it seem like it was all so very exasperating. Tedious. Disappointing. Trying to teach a toddler to count and it kept getting jammed at three. Mischa loathed moments like this. She hated them for the spike of self-disappointment they caused. She hated them for, in some sick, sick way, she wanted to make Tom a little proud. She hated them because Tom was a pretentious prick who preened like a peacock when he thought he knew something other's didn't.

"The girl who lived. What an appropriate epithet. Two killing curses, and only one meager scar. And that, I theorize, is the product not of _my_ doing, but rather your mothers… Sacrifice. Millennia of wizarding history, centuries of war, decades of bloodshed, and only you; a scrawny, jittery, little girl, have ever survived the darkest curse known to our kind. Does it not make you wonder why?"

Mischa shot up, and irritably threw the flower into her trolley, not caring very much when it toppled and spilled soil all over the place. The owner of the stall, an old woman with age worn skin, far too much paisley, and dark little eyes gave her an odd, almost concerned look. Mischa tried to smile again, failed miserably, and waved her hand about her, as if she saw a bee and was trying to gently guide it away. The paisley painted lady gave a crooked smile through her dentures, hunched back, as she went back to placing sweet peas in a line like soldiers on her kiosk.

"Even if I questioned it, I would never come looking for answers from you."

She couldn't help herself. Mischa looked down. Looked at Tom, gone but still very much here Tom, and felt that thrice damned echo leap where her heart should be. There was no anger in her. Not for Tom. Anger was pointless. Anger made Tom smile. Anger made him laugh. No. Mischa had something much worse, something, just one thing, Tom hated just as much as she did.

Pity.

And so she used it like the weapon it could be, if you had a sense for it. Subtle.

"I don't even think _you_ know when you're lying."

It worked. The button was pressed. The switch was flipped. Tom was beside her in a flash, a breath, a flurry of smoke and all things wrong in the world. Then, as Tom did, her paradoxical Tom, he did what was impossible.

He reached out and touched her.

Well, grabbed was more apt. His frigid fingers bit hard into the skin of her forearm, enfolding around her thin wrist, unyielding, relentless. He squeezed. It hurt. Mischa nearly cried. Not for the pain. Mischa was used to pain. She had been since the seventh time her aunt smacked her across the face, long before she knew Tom, or knew he was inside her. Yet, she nearly sobbed because Tom _could _do this. Touch her. Feel her. He was getting stronger.

"Do not belittle me, Potter. We both know I have, not once, lied to you. Who else can say the same? Albus? I think not. You're dithering friends? They lied to you every day. The Order? How long did they keep you in the dark? Gryffindor house? They turned their back on you every chance they had. Sirius Black? He never did take you away, did he? Never really tried, despite all the pretty little promises he gave you of a warm home and a loving family."

Yet… If Tom could touch her, she could touch _him. _Snapping her free hand down, she snatched at his wrist, dug her fingers into the soft underside, burrowed and tunnelled and scratched, and there was a bloom of too great gratification flourishing in her gut at the widening of his pale, shrewd eyes, the bob of his Adam's apple, when he realised his slip.

_Your heart beats, mine echoes. You breathe, and I get breath. You touch me, I feel you back. You bruise me, I bleed you. You ebb, and I flow. I fade, and you pour. You forget yourself, Tom. This, whatever the fuck this is, is a two-way street. It always has been. I can hurt you in all the ways you can hurt me. Shock you in all the ways you surprise me. Scare you as you frighten me. Try it. I fucking dare you. _

"You lied about Sirius. You showed me his death. His painful, gruesome death. You implanted false memories and thoughts into my head… My _mind_, knowing full well I would run for him. You fooled me, and Sirius died. Don't try to play the hero with me, Tom. I know your fucking tricks all too well. They're _my_ tricks too."

Mischa yanked at his hand, it slithered free from its hold, she threw it back to him like one would throw a piece of used tissue. She knew he heard her. Both by voice and mind, overlapping into one mass of feeling and thought. She knew it as she knew her name. They could talk this way, him and her. External, in limited, constrictive words that gnawed and impaled, or internal, with all the brilliance and limitlessness of sentiment.

His head cantered to the side, curls dipping into hooded eyes.

"Did I? Or did Albus tell you that was my strategy? Or did you see a version of events not yet come to pass? I was going to kill the mutt. I will not start lying now. I thought of it. Much as you saw it to be, I planned it. Why wouldn't I? Sirius Black was a formidable wizard. He was… loyal to you. If I wanted you separated, weak, and alone, the mutt had to go. It was nothing personal, sweet girl. Yet, you saw it before I could act, and, in taking suit to stop such a happenstance from taking place, you changed it. Given, the ending stuck true, didn't it? Your beloved Sirius died."

He spat the word beloved like it was venom and poison on his forked tongue. She supposed it was. Still, there was a shade, a gleam, in the sweep of his eye. Bonfire made inferno by jealousy and fury.

"Death cannot be so easily cheated. Not for others, it seems. You simply delayed the inevitable."

Mischa shook her head, shoved passed him, _through _him. She was done. Done talking. Done listening. Done. Stomping her way to the flower stall, she dug a hand into her pocket, yanked out some money, and slapped it on the desk. She left before the woman could give her any change, snarling underneath her breath.

"I'm not a bloody seer."

He scoffed… He actually _scoffed_ at her.

"I never said you was. Seers, I have come to belatedly realise, are far more trouble than they are worth. You, however, are worth all the trouble you can muster."

Anew, there was no praise. Tom was a man of cool calculation. He weighed people's worth like jewellers checked diamonds for impurities. Detached. Clinical. Cruel. If the flaw was too big, if the diamond wouldn't sell, if it would cost too much effort to unload, Tom wouldn't bother with it. Him saying she was worth all the trouble she could make only meant, to a man like Tom, that her usefulness was worth the additional endeavor it would take to keep her close and in one piece.

_Relatively _in one piece.

Tom Riddle didn't care if you lost a finger or a foot or a fragment of your soul.

Practicality minus difficulty equals Tom's curiosity squared.

Nevertheless, Mischa left him hanging. She refused to take the bait. No more asking questions. No more prodding him, no matter how fucking good it felt. She would not get caught on the catch that was Tom Riddle, she told herself.

Mischa was a terrible liar.

Sensing he was losing the fight, Mischa stumbling back into that obstinate state of pretending he didn't exist, he swapped tactics like one would swap a fishing tackle. Swiftly, but with the deliberate care that only came from knowing the prey you hunted.

Tom came around again. Mischa walked faster. Tom had longer legs. He cut in front, hands in slacks, easy and light and awfully too jovial, spinning to saunter backwards so he could face her as she tried to get ahead of him. Away. Far away. He had to huddle his shoulders and bend awkwardly towards her.

Tall bastard.

"What if I were to say I am not here of my own volition? At least, not here _originally_ of my own choice?"

Mischa laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. _Mischa didn't do pretty. _Not in any aspect of her life. It was too high pitched, too jarring, too severe and rough, the sound of mirrors and glass and fine white china breaking on pavement. The people around her turned to look, frowning, glowering, grimacing. The laughter ceased abruptly as it fixed into a hot bead in her throat. Mischa tugged her trolley faster. Harder. Head down. Eyes to the ground.

"I would call you a fucking liar. A bad one at that. And we both know that's not true."

Tom clicked his tongue at her. Impossible Tom. Tenacious Tom. Tutting Tom. Tom who was _still _fucking here!

"The girl who lived. The girl who survived the killing curse, through sheer power of will. The girl who saw mourning before it came. The girl who could change it, if she willed it hard enough. The girl who sees dead torments in her head. The girl who can speak to ghosts and spirits no one else can see. The girl who united the Deathly Hallows. Tell me, what do they all have in common, Mischa?"

Mischa faltered halfway back to Hannibal, lurching on her feet. She paused. She exhaled. She scrubbed at her face with trembling hands. No one bothered to look her way this time. They wouldn't. People only really cared when something affected _them. _Having a mental breakdown in the middle of the crowd? No problem, just keep swimming by. Laugh a little too loudly and disturb their own thoughts? Grab a pitchfork for the unstable loony in your mists.

"Me. They have _me_ in common."

Her voice was muffled by the palm of her hands. It sounded like she was drowning. She thought she might have felt that way too.

"Try again, Mischa. You're close. You're nearly there… I can feel it on the tip of your tongue. What's the one thing, no matter how far you go, no matter how fast you run, you can never flee? It's here with you, with us, even now. Come on, Mischa. Don't think it. Say it. Say it!"

Mischa broke.

"Death! Alright? Are you happy now? They all have death in common! I was born in it, I've lived in it, and funny enough, I'll die in it too! Is that what you want to hear? Poor little Potter girl, death as her only friend! Well done Tom! Well fucking done! You've pointed out what everybody already bloody knows! Round of applause for your brilliant fucking insight, you sick bastard!"

People were looking. People were watching. People were edging away. The old married man hustled his aging wife to the side, around, gone. The butcher nearest to her stilled in his pick, pick, picking of feathers. The little boy missed his football, kicked air. The woman with her baby scurried back across, into the perceived safety of the crowd.

Mischa didn't care.

It felt good to yell. It felt good to scream. It felt good to give voice to something terrible she's known all along. Being seen as crazy, delirious, didn't seem so dreadful in the pit of relief that washed over her in the fulfilment. Tom smiled at her.

"The wand, the cloak and the ring. Nothing but trinkets in reality… I see now, Mischa. I see you. I've seen your heart, and it is _mine_."

A hand stroked her face, fingers looping into a loose curl swaying across her eye and nose. It tugged, it fiddled, it lingered. Tom was touching her. Tom _can _touch her. Tom can _touch _her. It made her sick. Viciously sick. It made her excited too. Thrilled. Delighted. Adrenaline and pounding heart and sweat and tears and goose-pimples and pin-pricked pupils… Alive. It made her _alive._

With Tom, Mischa lived, whether she wanted it to be that way or not.

"All that time wasted. Horcruxes, elixirs, the philosopher's stone, the Deathly Hallows… Through it all, and I find it right here, in you of all things. Can you hear fate laughing?"

Tom's tone was wistful, entirely too smooth for a face made up of such sharp lines and angles. Tom the songbird. Tittering and tuttering and tricking. His hand flopped to his side, before Mischa had the chance to hop up and bite the digit right off its fucking knuckle.

"It's in _you._ The power to conquer death. You didn't have the Deathly Hallows in the crib, did you? Yet, you survived. Lily's love… What a pretty story. You don't do pretty, though, do you Mischa? I am afraid that is all it is. _A story_. The Deathly Hallows were never a stick, a rock or a scrap of cloth. Symbolism at its finest. The war bred brother with power in his blood becomes the wand after a thousand years of tale being passed down mouth to mouth before being inscribed in words. The grieving brother who can revive the dead, the resurrection stone, in even less time. And the man with the cloak, who could hide and run from all with just a blink of his eyes, the last to be objectified. Don't you see, Potter? That's all we are in the end. _Stories_. Maybe one day there will be an epic of us. The viper and the fawn. The poison and the sword."

Mischa knew where he was going. She always fucking did, even when she really didn't want to. She knew and she wanted him to stop. She wanted it all to stop. She didn't want to hear. She didn't want to see. She didn't want to _feel_. Yet, Tom, songbird Tom with a keen slicing smile, feels no compassion or mercy. He doesn't have it in him. Even if he did, even if it's only the smallest of scraps, he undeniably didn't give her any right then.

"The Deathly Hallows were never items. It's a _bloodline._ A bloodline that, once three, now one… Once united, creates… Well, you_._ Generations later, and the Deathly Hallows are unified… In you. I suppose if you look far enough back, your mother ties back to one brother, your father the two others. I am here because you _want _me here. I live because you _want _me to live. As Parseltongue is my heritage, my blood, death is _yours_. Some part of you calls me back, keeps me grounded, right here, in you. I am here because you want _me_. You've always wanted me."

Mischa shook her head violently. Thick grief gave way to gritty despair, despair gave way to scorching denial, and denial, as it often did in the very bleak bowels of Mischa's guts, tore hot into anger. She felt cruel. So very heartless. Savage. Boundless.

Mischa felt free.

Mischa felt like Tom.

"I don't want you. I never wanted you. Your father didn't even want you, Tom. He kicked you to the curb as soon as he saw your face. He knew what you were from the first glance. Something unlovable. Something pathetic. That's what you do to those unlovable things. You leave them on a doorstep and you don't look back. Your mother too. She died as soon as you were born. Abandoned you. Left you to the orphanage. Even she knew death was preferable than having you around. Lord Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard of our age, half immortal, half god… The monster no one ever wanted."

Tom snickered, but he didn't deceive Mischa. She understood his emotions better than she would ever understand her own, in a regrettable turn of destiny. He was hurt. Severely. He might smile at her, as he was. There may not be any outward sign of his reactions frolicking out on his face in open expression, as it did with everyone else. He may be calm, and cool, and collected bodily, but she _felt _him. He was similarly as cruel, equally heartless, just as savage, and likewise as boundless as her in his anger fueled by hurt in that moment.

Tom was just better at smirking through it.

"You would know all about being dumped on a doorstep, wouldn't you? Do you like your uncle, Mischa? I like him. He made you breakfast this morning, didn't he? Sausage links, eggs, toast, bacon… Exactly what your aunt and uncle used to beat you to make. Do you think he knew that? I do. Did you eat it? Did you gobble it up? The sausage was different, wasn't it? Sweet. Sweeter than pork. Why was it so sweet, do you think? Clove? Sage? Thyme? Or, perhaps, it was a… little lost lamb?"

He was attempting to separate her from her uncle. A blind man could see it. He was trying to shove a wedge between them. Plant discourse and watch it grow into the poison ivy that only Tom could make. That's what Tom did. He was only ever happy when Mischa wasn't. He was only ever happy when she was alone. He was only ever happy when, if he was hurting, she was hurting too. He was only ever happy when… When all she had was _him. _

She supposed she was easier to mold and control that way.

Then again, who the fuck knew what went on inside Tom's bloody head?

Mischa didn't and he quite literally lived inside her own fucking mind.

"You can't hurt me anymore, Voldemort. You're just a man. No. Even less now. A ghost. A memory screaming to be remembered."

Tom's nostrils flared.

"I'm not really him, am I? Voldemort… He was me, a part of me, cut off and bleeding. Deranged. A shard. A Horcrux himself, by the end. But me? Now? United once again? I am not him. That is like saying the grape is the vineyard. I may not currently hold a body of my own, but that does not make me any less human."

Mischa chuckled.

"You were _never_ human."

Blue collided with green, melding, melting, merging. If Mischa didn't know Tom was the epitome of a sociopath, only because there was no other name for what he was, if she didn't know Tom couldn't feel emotions as everyone else did, if she had not seen the myriad of sins and misdeeds and monstrosities of his life, that he had sent to her in countless nightmares while she slumbered, she would have thought, in that moment, he looked so very dejected. Despondent. Desolate.

Melancholic.

"We all were once, Mischa… We all were once."

Then he was gone. Smoke evaporating in the spring wind. Left. Mischa had not sent him away. She had not wished he would vanish. She had not pushed him back to that dank part of her mind where she put all things Tom. He was just… Gone… of his own choice, his words swaying potently in the waning echo of her heart.

_We all were once. _

A strong hand fastened down on her shoulder. Mischa jumped.

"Are you alright, Mischa?"

Doctor Hannibal Lecter, her uncle, gazed down at her. The smile she had spotted him sporting with the butcher was still present, but she could not ignore the stiffness to his dark eyes that were holding back a worried frown. _Do you like your uncle, Mischa? I like him. _Uncontrollably, her shoulders hardened underneath his hand.

Tom never liked anything good.

Then again, Tom knew that. Tom knew _she _knew that. He was trying to isolate her. Get her under thumb. Get her to heel. He was planting his noxious seeds in her, and Mischa couldn't let them grow. It was fortunate that she, too, was a good gardener, then. Shaking away Tom's ghost… As much as she could ever shake away Tom, Mischa smiled blindingly at Hannibal.

"Perfectly fine. I was just debating on whether we should get lilies or not, but they're out of season, and, I suppose, they die a bit too easily… Hannibal?"

Hannibal was gazing down at her, cocking a brow in question, and Mischa was speaking without meaning to. She shouldn't listen to Tom. She should never listen to Tom.

She always does.

"Is there… Is there the name Peverell in the Lecter family? In our direct lineage? One that… A branch that links to my mother?"

The apparition of a frown was gone, no tightness in sight, and Hannibal grinned down at her, patting her shoulder in easy beats. It made her chest feel less barren.

"Yes, there is. My mother, your grandmother's, maiden name was Peverell. Why?"

It hurt. It hurt and it twisted. It hurt and it twisted and it spoiled like milk left in the sun.

"Oh, I think Nanny Annie mentioned it once when I asked her what her name used to be. I was just checking. My last project at school was about family trees and I… I… There was a lot of blind spots I couldn't answer. I thought it might be fun to try and fill them in."

Mischa tasted bile, stale and rancid and sour, as Hannibal took her trolley, taking her down to the better flower stalls at the end of the farmer's market row.

"That's a superb idea, Mischa. It is important to know where you came from. I have records, only a few unfortunately, and photo albums at home if you wish to see them?"

Mischa could only nod as she followed Hannibal into the crowd. Neither they, nor the flower vendor, saw the dead lily unfurling, blackened stamen bleeding to pollen rich red, charred petals plumping out to vibrant, speckled white, leaves and stem flush with green life once more. There was something whimsically tragic about dead flowers. Yet, there was something hauntingly beautiful about buds in bloom, profuse with life.

Mischa Potter fell somewhere between the two.

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**Thoughts?**

**A.N: **I know, no Will this chapter, and I made you all wait so horribly long. However, for what comes with Will, this chapter _has _to come first, or bits won't make sense not only next chapter, but much later on. I tried it the other way around, I've spent about a month flipping everything this way and that, even sent it to a Beta Reader to see if it worked, and they agreed, this one sort of has to go here as in this fic, to keep it more coherent, there's only going to be one P.O.V per chapter. I did warn you all this fic was terribly slow lol.

Good news, however, is Will definitely comes next chapter. In fact, the whole of next chapter is solely from his P.O.V. And, over the next three or four chapter's, we're dipping out of Mischa's head and into Will and Hannibal, and maybe, just maybe, Tom's, so, we get a lot more of them.

**THANK YOU ALL **for the follows, favourites, and of course, all the lovely reviews! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Four: Reflections and Deflections.**

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Will Graham's P.O.V

Will Graham saw things in reflections. He had since he was a little boy. He did not mean that in the typical sense. Regrettably, his gift wasn't typical. He supposed a clearer description would be perceiving issues through deflections and refractions tinted and chiselled by the prism recognized as emotion and then reconstructed in a form of visual representation more digestible to the mind. For ease, he simply said he saw things, pretended he didn't, moved on, and left it at that. Yet, that was getting more and more difficult these days.

It was his job to _see_.

To see and feel. Feel and see. See and feel and _lose._ His own emotions were beginning to become something… Decidedly not his own. That was the quandary with empathy, Will thought. Whose to say what feelings were his or not? Will Graham was a man who felt as if he had a storm inside, the winds of hurt howling with the triggers of his past.

Where did the wind come from? From the east, wheezed from the shrieking maw of Garret Jacob Hobbs? From the west, where the phantoms of his father rested in shadow? From the high north, gasped from the angry eye of an ever-heaving Crawford? Or was it that murky south, deep and dark and damp, between moss and gloom, where sometimes, only some, he thought he saw a glimmer of the Ravenstag sighing swirls of smoke?

Will didn't want the storm, he _never _wanted the storm, he only wanted detachment. A place to breathe without the wind snatching his breath away. Perhaps it was the latest case that Crawford had sent him sniffing for like a blood hound that sent the guillotine swinging. A woman who hoarded kids, warping them, distorting, twisting, bending them like clay until, in a clandestine act, she took them home.

Took them home to murder their families.

There was something there, in that case, that Will refused to see echoed back. A seizing and supplanting that, as always, hit a bit too close to home. _A break. _Will needed a break, a moment to catch his breath and get his head screwed on right. That was all. A little break.

He didn't want to go to Alana. He couldn't stand the way she looked at him lately, with that pity slithering into her weeping smile. The pity of a person watching a dog who had been kicked one to many times. _Empty pity. _As with those people who watched the beaten dog crawl and drag its bleeding belly on the floor, who did nothing but shake their head and say it was such a shame, Alana would do nothing but quiver and lament.

Will could not go to Jack. He already saw Will as something broken, beyond mending, the wrench with a missing hook jaw, worthless apart from hammering in nails with brute force. Will couldn't stand the thought of letting the others at the Bureau see him like this, blinking and flickering like a candle caught in a hurricane.

Miserably, in Will's tiny sphere of social incompetence, that left only one other person. Doctor Hannibal Lecter. As if fate was giggling at him too, the good doctor had chosen just this moment to vanish for two weeks. Will's last appointment, three days ago, had to be rebooked through a voicemail of all things, Lecter's message simply apologizing for being away on 'business'. Whatever the fuck that entailed for a psychiatrist.

With no one else to turn to, nowhere to really go, Will had, of course, fled to his dogs. Possibly, that was why he was standing where he was that day, Winston leashed at his side, one unseasonably warm Baltimore morning in the middle of a farmers market. Shop stalls lined the underground route of the overhead highway, car horns and engines mixing with the hollering of vendors, a flamboyant scene with a milling throng of clatter and odours and headaches. Lovers pecked at each other, preening over artichokes. Housewives hustled and bustled and haggled. The elderly dithered over cuts of lamb and pig, soaking in the sunshine.

It was everything Will Graham hated, and it was exactly what he needed. It was what _he _hated. Him. Not Hobbs. Not Crawford, or Alana, or Hannibal, or any other killer that came ambling along. For a flash, Will was Will and nothing and no one else, and, regretfully, he needed to be reminded of that.

More and more and more often...

Winston nudged his knee, yapping, catching his care away from the roving mob swaying around them. Will bent down on his haunches, scratching behind the Labradors proud ear, fiddling with the leash, tightening his hold. He never generally leashed his dogs, couldn't stomach, as with many things, the sight of a collar, knowing all too well what being chained felt like, being jerked to places you had no desire to go, on the whims and wishes of a master, at best allegorically. Yet, needs must, and in the lively hordes of Baltimore's farmers market, unlike the woods in his backyard, Will couldn't afford Winston running off.

"Alright boy, we're nearly there."

There was a particular farmer in this flock of folly, who sold cow offal fashioned into dog food. Fresh and meaty, and everything his dogs adored. Just because Will was suffering didn't mean his dogs had to too. It was pricey, as all artisan goods tended to be, but, well, Will was comfortable. His dogs, and the odd fishing paraphernalia that he couldn't make himself, were the only things he routinely splashed the cash on, even if he had been wearing the same coat for the last eight years.

It didn't take him long to find the stall, it was always at the edge of the bulging barrage of lunacy, thank God, and it took him even less time to pay for the bag of dog food, heave it over his shoulder, and with a wagging Winston beside him, begin to return to his car. It was as he was traversing the carpark, halfway there, midway home, partway safe, that he spotted the Bentley.

Black, slick with polish, regal in the way it sloped and cut its pose, not a speck of dust or dirt spoiling chrome, glass or wheel. Strange in its severe purity, standing out from the sea of truck beds and Civics, imperial in its grandeur.

Will Graham knew that car.

He knew its owner too. Its owner who, as he did with everything he owned, matched it perfectly.

That was Doctor Lecter's car.

Will fumbled and halted, the dog food sliding on his shoulder, Winston lugging on for a step or two when he noticed the sudden stop. Will had never took the doctor as a man who went to these sorts of gritty, grassroot fairs. No. Will saw him in those artiste shops spelled with a pretentious extra p and e, in the streets of Europe, enveloped with truffles and wines and caviar.

So far from anywhere Will would be.

_Could _be.

Will politely snubbed the precipitous dip in his gut at the thought. It meant nothing. Nothing at all. As did his headaches, the mounting hallucinations, and the snowstorms still thundering inside to the song of Hannibal's laughter. Hannibal Lecter was his psychiatrist, nothing more. He was barely his friend on a good day. Will loathed him, in a way, loathed him with a fire he had never felt before, for the way he prodded and poked and pushed and never, ever, retreated. Ran. Abandoned him as most people did. His own mother included.

Will chuckled.

And Hannibal was, quite possibly, the only person who knew him so completely.

Who _saw _him.

Anew, he laughed.

His life was pitiful.

His work appointed therapist was his only friend.

How fucking depressing.

As if even an errant thought could conjure the man from the mists, Hannibal came around the side of his car to pop the boot, a tray of flowers, plum chrysanthemums if Will wasn't mistaken, balancing in his hands. Will dawdled. Hannibal was dressed casually that day, sandy hair dappled with grey falling across his forehead, peculiarly out the sleek confines of his suit, cashmere jumper and neat slacks still expensive but… Homely. He looked homely and… Domestic.

Once More, Will pretended he didn't feel the dip in his stomach, right bellow his navel, roll to a tangled squirming bead of friction knotted in his groin. He was getting good at that now. _Pretending. _He pretended he wasn't losing his damned mind each morning as he fought to get out of his sweaty bed-sheets. He pretended he didn't hear voices and see things other's could not. And, lately, he pretended Hannibal was his friend, just his friend, barely that. Yet, he didn't walk away, didn't shy off to his own car, he stood and watched. Watched as Hannibal shouldered the trunk open to put the tray away, before he turned and-

And held his hands out, out into the air, palm up, waiting. Confusion niggled at Will brows, drawing them tight over his grey eyes. Then _she _came, out from the rear of the adjacent car, clutching a soaring heap of haphazardly balanced potted orchids and arum lilies. So focused on Hannibal, Will had overlooked the girl, and now that he_ did_ see her, he wondered how he could have done so.

She was tiny compared to Hannibal, little compared to Will too, he thought, if she were to stand at his side. Tiny and… _Broken_. Completely, utterly broken. She was clad in green corduroy dungarees over an over-sized, dense white jumper, feet peeking out in a pair of battered tennis shoes. She appeared as if she wanted her clothes to devour her, eat her out of existence, camouflage her from life. Her long, pale blonde hair was messy, chaotic, entwined and flyaway slender, piled high upon her head in a bun.

Nevertheless, what snared his eye was _her, _what little she showed. She was… She was made up of sawn-off butterfly wings, Will thought. Pallid, soft, fragile, with a jagged and shattered end. Shadows stalked underneath her large, startlingly green eyes. A scar, ugly but elegant in a brutal way, cracked down her forehead like a bolt of lightning, peering out between the locks of her fringe. Her bottom lip was a mangled pasty mess, bruises mottled down chin, cut splitting flesh, as if someone had tried to bite it clean off her face.

Butterfly wings and pressed petals, lovely to look at, crumbling to dust when touched. And those green, green eyes of hers did not match a single thing about her. Clever, keen, perceptive, they were the eyes of an archaic soul. Someone who had seen a thousand lifetimes washed away in a tide, more moonlight than sunbeam, and still kept on watching the sea for sign or omen of lifeboat or shooting star.

Hunting for a hint of hope.

Winston barked.

The two glanced over.

Hannibal smiled graciously.

"Will, I did not expect to see you here."

Will shuffled, sliding the bag of food from his shoulder to thud at his feet, a nervous, twitchy little smile trembling at his mouth, as he shoved his glasses up his nose.

"I can say the same doctor. This doesn't seem to be your usual hunting grounds."

Something in his tone, or his voice, or perhaps even his words, made the smile on Hannibal's face switch to a smirk. There one moment, gone the next, scarcely sluggish enough for Will to catch. However, it was soon brushed away as Hannibal nodded down to the girl at his side, the girl who was frozen to the ground, staring uncannily close at Will, unblinking and unwavering.

Those eyes saw things, Will thought.

Saw things as his own did.

Alarmingly, he pondered if she glimpsed Hobbs at his back, in his head, digging and burrowing and tunnelling. Will shuffled in his stance again.

"Ah, I suppose it is not, but when needs must. Mischa here has a rather fantastic green thumb and has taken on the project of sprucing up my rather poorly neglected garden."

Will startled at the name, thankful that Hannibal missed the action as he took the flowers from the girl to put in the trunk of his car. Once, what felt like a lifetime ago, Hannibal had told him of a sister, when Will had been puzzled about what he should do with Abigail after he had, undoubtedly, killed her own father.

Mischa, the dead sister. Or not so dead, if she was standing beside him, what? Fifteen? Sixteen? No older, despite her aged, ancient eyes. Had Hannibal lied to him? Will curiously scanned the girl. He could see it now, close, with her attention on him. It was in the biting twists and slants and angles, the melancholy posture, the hollow grace of a dispossessed aristocrat. _Lecters._ Lecters were a breed of their own, if these two in front of him were anything to go by. A haunted beauty from an old world long lost.

Hannibal, at Will's sudden and swift descent into silence, as he always could, must have picked up on the jumbled thoughts of his mind, the whiff of suspicion at being lied to loitering, as the doctor smiled once more, gentle and soothing.

"How impolite of me. Will, this is my niece, Mischa. Mischa, this is Will Graham."

No lie, only his half-baked assumption then. Will chuckled nervously.

"Right, yes, of course. Hello, I'm Will. I'm your uncles patient."

He winced sharply. Will didn't know what it was about the girl, the sheer stillness of her as she regarded him, yet never braving to meet his eye, or how entirely out of sorts he had been over the last month, but a flair kindled in his chest. Made him try to appease, connect, and this, saying he was nutty enough to need her uncle habitually rooting through his head for demons, was how he introduced himself? He could have said colleague, friend, anything else but patient.

She startled, gaze flying away from him and to the ground between them, as she ostensibly came back to herself. She slouched closer to the car, closer to her uncle, and never looked back again.

"Nice to meet you."

Her voice was soft and airy, tinted with an English accent, as fractured as she was. _Like him. _Abruptly, surprisingly, with no reason Will could promptly see, he felt a strong sense of kinship there, drifting between them. The only difference between them, Will thought, was the years of experience he had over the girl at hiding the fissures and flaws.

"How long are you visiting for?"

Will didn't rightly know why he was trying so hard to get the girl to talk. He ordinarily shunned idle conversation. Yet, he wanted to. He wanted to see her laugh, perhaps smile, and meet his eye. If only to take his own mind of all the horrid little ghosts plaguing it. He thought, perhaps, she might need that too, even if it was only for a while. A muscle jumped in her jaw.

_Nightmares. _

Terrible nightmares.

She chewed that lip up herself, to stop the screams, Will would guess, and he was good at speculating. Nevertheless, she completely ignored his question, sidestepped and dodged, not so rudely, but in a way people ducked a bullet. Instinctual. Eyes still to the ground before them, she nodded at something, stuttering.

"Can I-I?"

Will frowned before he glanced down, spotting Winston bounding on his leash, wrenching to get to Mischa, tail wagging a mile a minute. Winston was anti-social on the best of days, preferring his woods and nooks and joints to chomp rather than a pat or a game of fetch. Will laughed, achingly real, so hot in his throat it almost burned. A laugh he had not had for a very long time.

"Sure, go ahead. Count yourself lucky. Winston hates people. He even barks at me sometimes."

Mischa came teetering as close only as much as she needed to, no further, close enough for Winston to use the last of his leash to get to her. She crouched down, indifferent to the dirt and grime of the car park, settling on her knees and began to fuss him enthusiastically. Winston's tail was virtually a blur. Her face lit up in a grin, toothy and wide and very much lopsided, and it transformed her face completely. She looked mischievous under the cold sun of Baltimore, part sprite, quasi-imp, with all the wayward danger of a fairy who knew your name.

"I like d-dogs."

And, by the way Winston was all over her, dogs liked her too. She peeked up, grinning, but only made it to his nose. The pieces of the jigsaw clicked together, and Will saw the portrait. No eye contact. Not ignoring a question out of rudeness or dodging, but for a lack of social skills. Blunt, single sentences. Speech impediment in times of emotional anxiety or duress. He could see it all so clearly now, with her grinning, refusing to meet his gaze head on. It wasn't that hard when Will himself had the same scrabble letters dashed on his wonky board.

_Autism. _

The clunk of the Bentley's boot knocking shut brought his focus away from the hunched girl and wiggling dog, as he watched Hannibal stride around them, coming to Will's side, hands pressing into pockets, head tilted as he watched the pair, answering what his niece couldn't.

"Mischa will be staying, hopefully, indefinitely. She lives with me now."

The decisive snap of a connection linking, neurons firing, ties binding like constellations on a map of the stars. Will understood now. Better than most. You could spot an orphan nearly a mile off. No matter what they wore, how they walked, talked or acted, there was a reedy doggish vigour to them. The girl was delicate, certainly, perhaps she _was _made up of hacked up butterfly wings and dried out petals, but there was a steal frame below it all, a lithe intensity that bellied a buried strength.

Will opened his mouth to speak when Winston's tail stopped its thwacking on the pavement. Will glanced back down to the pair, frowning. Winston was staring dead ahead at something over Mischa's shoulder, a roaring growl beginning to rumble in his barrelled chest. Will's hand tightened on the leash.

"Winston! Stop! Winston!"

It was no use. The dog was crawling backwards, hackles raised, belly low to the ground, ears drawn back to its scalp, tail between its legs, still staring at that empty space behind Mischa's shoulder. The girl didn't look too surprised, oddly, at Winston's hasty shift of stance, as she took a gander over her own shoulder. Something must have caught her attention as her shoulders sagged defeatedly before she dusted her hands off on her thighs and stood, backing away from the dog woefully.

"I'm sorry. He's normally not like this. I don't know what's got into him. He may be antisocial, but he doesn't normally growl or bark, and he always listens when I call and-"

He's rambling, he knows, as he knows by the plunging cast of the girls eye that she's sad. There's something tragic and damaged about the girl, the same kind of tragic ruin to himself, and he wants to erase it. Obliterate it from reality, because, maybe, just maybe, if there was hope for her, there might be hope for himself. However, she stood as he rambled, and-

Something wasn't right.

Something was dreadfully _wrong_.

One Bentley. Three people. One growling dog. A stripe hurtled in the corner of his eye. A shadow swelling. A pulse of movement in the reflection of the car window they were all standing by. One Bentley. One dog…

_Four _people.

Slowly, so slowly, Will bowed and squinted at the reflection. You see, Will Graham saw things in reflections. He had since he was a little boy. He did not mean that in the typical sense. Unfortunately, his gift wasn't typical. Yet, perhaps, just this once, one frightening time, it could be _literal. _

A man, towering, limber and nimble, dressed impeccably in black slacks and an emerald turtleneck, loomed right behind Mischa's reflection. A pale hand, long fingered and deft, rose high, sinking into her hair, almost lovingly stroking and caressing at intertwined curl. Will could only watch as the figure bent down and gingerly kissed the crown of her head.

Not in full command of himself, Will's gaze snapped back to Mischa staring at the floor, the real Mischa, and he sighed. Nothing. No one. Just a girl, sad and bent, and-

The same agile hand, coolly pale, white like marble, creeping from behind like a vine, slithering around thin neck, wrapping, squeezing, enveloping, trailing a streak of crimson, _blood,_ and-

Mischa met his eye.

Green flashed scarlet.

Will stumbled back on troubled feet, bumped shoulders with Hannibal, tripped on a pothole, and went unceremoniously falling on his ass. Winston's snarl bit off to a yelp as his leash pulled, but all Will could focus on was the rapid pounding of his heart jackhammering in his chest, whipping against sinew and rib. Hands were on him swiftly, at elbow and shoulder, large and warm, pulling, gentle, persistent.

"Will, are you alright? Do you need to sit down? A drink?"

Will, wide-eyed and tongue thick between clenched teeth, with the help of Hannibal, came to a wobbly stand. He dared a glance at Mischa. She was still staring at him, though now she scowled too, and-

Nothing.

No hand.

No blood.

No red eyes.

Nothing.

Indeed, she looked upset, hurt perhaps, hurt and sorry and a little distraught. Will tried to laugh, though he was certain it sounded more like a snivel than a snicker.

"I'm fine. I'm… fine. I just felt a bit faint. Nothing too bad. I should-… I should probably head home. Grab a nap."

Hannibal didn't let go of the hold on his arm, shaking his head.

"I do not feel right leaving you alone to drive when you are obviously sick or tired. Come. I'll drive you back to mine where you can rest for an hour or two, away from the seclusion of your own mind, Crawford, and work."

Will was already babbling off his polite refusal, but it was, evidently, falling on deaf ears as Hannibal guided him to the car, ushered him into the passenger seat, and slammed the door before Will could slink back out as Hannibal took a step away. Mischa said nothing as she clambered into the back seat, followed by Winston being steered next to her.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

The voice was bright, gentle, trusting, a flap of thin wing against Will's eardrum. So far removed from those horrific wintry red eyes. _Blood spattered on snow drifts. _Will swivelled in his seat, glanced over shoulder, and saw Mischa watching him, anew, not meeting his eye. The battered, bruised and cut lip was trapped between her teeth as she worried the already split flesh, threatening to tear a new rivet. Will smiled, easy breezy, and completely lying.

"Couldn't be better. Just a… Headache. It's just a headache"

It hung sour in the air, rancid as all lies were, but Mischa didn't push as she nodded and sat back, feet folded beneath her, curling and coiling. Winston was back to twisting in on himself, squirrelling himself into a corner, ears down, huddled behind Will's seat, silent, as far away from Mischa as he possibly could be in the cramped car space, as if the dog was trying to make room in the back though Mischa was tiny and over the other side.

Hannibal slid into the driver's seat as Will veered back around. His gaze skimmed the rear-view mirror, and he had to fight down the sudden rise of bile burning his tender throat. The man was back, sitting in the reflection, stretched regally across the leather as if the seat was nothing less than a throne. One long leg crossed over the other, right beside Mischa, arm draped across the head support, toying lazily with a loose blonde curl from her bun, the man looked up.

Looked right at him in the mirror.

He fucking winked.

The ignition roared the engine to life as Will's gaze scurried away.

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**Yay or Nay?**

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Mischa splashed the cold water on her flushed face as she hunched over the bathroom sink, eyes screwed shut tight, scoffing for what felt like the hundredth time.

"I told you already, I'm not going to do _that._"

She felt his sigh on the back of her neck as he lounged at her side, cold, gliding, goose bumps blistering her thin skin.

"Oh, Mischa. You grasp at your pain like a babe suckles at a pacifier. Predictably and infuriatingly tedious. Let it go and move one. One spell is all it takes and everything will be-"

"I told you no. No matter how simple or quick the spell is. I am _not _doing it."

The tutting came slow like the droplets of cool, crisp water off the tap drip, drip, dripping into the sink.

"Yes you will. You must. He's dangerous, Mischa. He sees things. He'll see right through you. Do it now and do it swift before he can do the same to you."

Mischa pushed away from the sink violently, her voice low and vicious and cruel, as she faced Tom Riddle head on.

"I am _not _killing Will Graham."

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**THANK YOU ALL** for the follows, favourites and reviews! This chapter's for you, and I hope, even if it was a single line or word, you found something to smile about. As always, if you have a spare moment, please drop a review, they keep muses whispering, and hopefully, I will see you guys soon.


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